Abstract
Failed and failing states are sovereign political entities that are unable to provide for the basic security, geographic integrity, social justice, and material needs of their populations, for example, Afghanistan, Burkina-Faso, Burma/Myanmar, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Haiti, Mexico, Somalia, Sudan, and Uganda. State-directed violence tends to be high in such states as does the number of internally and externally displaced persons. Depending on their level of social deterioration, failed and failing states may or may not be recognized as competent political entities by the world community which, often, is called upon to provide increasingly higher levels of military assistance and humanitarian aid to enable countries on the brink of social implosion to perform as least some of their most critical political, legal, and social welfare functions. In 2010, Foreign Policy magazine and the Fund for Peace identified 37 countries worldwide as either “failed” or “failing” states on the brink of social implosion. This chapter explores the extent and conditions under which at least some of the world’s most socially vulnerable states are able to secure at least a minimum level of quality of life for a portion of its population. The analysis draws on both the Fund for Peace’s Failed States Index and the author’s fully established Weighted Index of Social Progress. A working agenda for helping failed states regain some semblance of political integrity and progressively higher levels of quality of life is suggested.
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Notes
- 1.
The concept of the “nation-state(s)” embraces two distinct components: the “state” or “states” refer to discrete political and geopolitical territories over which the state, acting as a “government,” claims sovereignty; “nation” or “nations” refer to the cultural or ethnic characteristics of the people who reside in the state (Britannica Online 2011a). The term “nation-state” implies that the two concepts coincide with one another (i.e., that the people of a given geographic territory share more or less the same cultural, religious, and ethnic characteristics), albeitthe vast majority of modern nation-states are characterized by substantial cultural diversity even though their geopolitical borders are fully recognized and accepted by the international community (CIA, 2011). Since the European Treaty of Westphalia in 1648, sovereign nation-states defer to one another as co-equal and autonomous powers with full authority over the territories and people they govern (Britannica Online 2011b). The concept of sovereign nation-states constitutes the basis for membership and voting privileges in the United Nations as well as in most major nongovernmental and non-state actor organizations, i.e., one nation, one vote.
- 2.
Individual political systems determine the precise role of the state in each of these sectors, i.e., either as facilitators or providers of such functions (Moran et al. 2006; Weingast and Wittman 2006). Overall, the role of the state is to ensure that such functions are performed whether by the private or public sector or through cooperative arrangements with both.
- 3.
“Adequacy of social provision” refers to the changing capacity of governments to provide for the basic social, material, and other needs of the people living within their borders, e.g., for food, clothing, shelter, and access to at least basic health, education, and social services, etc. (Estes 1988).
- 4.
The WISP’s statistical weights were derived through a two-stage principal components and varimax factor analysis in which indicator and subindex scores were analyzed separately for their contribution in explaining the variance associated with changes in social progress over time. Standardized indicator scores were multiplied by their respective factor loadings, averaged within their subindex, and the average subindex scores, in turn, were subjected to a second statistical weighting. Scores on the WISP range from a high of 72 to a low of 17 for 2010 (Estes 2010).
- 5.
The four primary groupings used in the more comprehensive analysis of world social development trends are (1) Developed Market Economies (DMEs) consisting primarily of economically advanced countries (plus selected middle-income countries added to the Organizations of Economic Cooperation and Development [OECD] on the basis of their current rapid pace of economic development, e.g., the Czech Republic, Mexico, South Korea, Turkey); (2) the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) consisting entirely of successor states to the former Soviet Union (FSU); (3) Developing Countries (DCs) consisting primarily of low- and middle-income countries located in developing Africa, Asia, and Latin America; and (4) Least Developed Countries (LDCs) which, for a variety of historical and socio-political reasons, experience net negative patterns of socio-economic development from one time period to another (UN-OHRLLS 2009a, b, c, d).
- 6.
In his 1996 book The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, Huntington identified clashes among the following civilizations that could be expected to dominate political affairs in much of the twenty-first century: (1) Western, (2) Latin America, (3) Islamic, (4) Sinic (Chinese), (5) Hindu, (6) Orthodox, (7) Japanese, and (8) African. The clashes are expected to take many forms ranging from cultural disintegration to military confrontations, but in the end, each would profoundly alter the character of the nations engaged in the conflicts and, in the process, change the course of future world history.
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Acknowledgement
Zhou Huiquan (Mary) of the Chinese University of Hong Kong is acknowledged for her research assistance in updating the statistics contained in this chapter.
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Estes, R.J. (2012). “Failed” and “Failing” States: Is Quality of Life Possible?. In: Land, K., Michalos, A., Sirgy, M. (eds) Handbook of Social Indicators and Quality of Life Research. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-2421-1_26
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