Failed state

From Citizendium, the Citizens' Compendium

A failed state is a nation or quasi-nation that is unable to deliver minimum governmental services to its citizens. It may not even have a recognizable government, although it has recognized boundaries. The definition is not rigorous but still useful. An annual Failed State Index, for example, is produced by a joint project between Foreign Policy and the Fund for Peace, which rates on indices including:^[1]

• Demographic pressures
• Refugees and internally displaced persons
• Group grievances
• Human flight
• Unequal development
• Economic decline
• Delegitimization of the state
• Public services
• Human rights
• Security apparatus
• Factionalized Elites
• Foreign interventions

Not to have failed, a state must be able to close three "gaps", of which the first is most important:

• security: protection "against internal and external threats, and preserving sovereignty over territory. If a government cannot ensure security, rebellious armed groups or criminal nonstate actors may use violence to exploit this security gap—as in Haiti, Nepal, and Somalia."
• capacity: The most basic are the survival needs of water, electrical power, food and public health, closely followed by education, communications and a working economic system.^[2] "An inability to do so creates a capacity gap, which can lead to a loss of public confidence and then perhaps political upheaval. In most environments, a capacity gap coexists with—or even grows out of—a security gap. In Afghanistan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, for example, segments of the population are cut off from their governments because of endemic insecurity. And in postconflict Iraq, critical capacity gaps exist despite the country’s relative wealth and strategic importance."
• legitimacy: closing the legitimacy gap is more than an incantation of "democracy" and "elections", but a government that is perceived to exist by the consent of the governed, has minimal corruption, and has a working law enforcement and judicial system that enforce human rights.

One characteristic of a failed state is the existence of major "gaps"."gaps".^[3] and Kilcullen's Pillars. ^[4] of the actors in the models

, which generally agrees with a model represents home as a box defined by geographic, ethnic, economic, social, cultural, and religious characteristics.

Inside the box are governments, counterinsurgent forces, insurgent leaders, insurgent forces, and the general population, which is made up of three groups:

1. those committed to the insurgents
2. those committed to the counterinsurgents
3. those who simply wish to get on with their lives. > In the table below, do not assume that a problematic state is not able, while closing its own gaps, is unable to assist other less developed states

Rough Classification of States

State type	Needs	Representative examples
Militarily strong but weak in other institutions	Lower tensions before working on gaps	Cuba, North Korea
Good performers	Continuing development of working institutions. Focused private investment	El Salvador, Ghana, Mongolia, Senegal, Nicaragua, Uganda
Weak states	Close one or two gaps	Afghanistan, Egypt, Indonesia, Iraq, Ivory Coast, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Myanmar, Pakistan Sudan, Syria, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Zimbabwe
Failed states	Close all gaps	Angola, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Haiti, Liberia, Palestinian Authority, Somalia, Gaza Strip

References