Spring 2009
The talk series The (Un)Making of Failing States: Profits, Risks, and Measures of Failure, organized by the Heinrich Böll Foundation North America in Fall/Winter 2008/09, tried to explore state failure phenomenon via three dialogues:
* The Unrelenting Logic of Business as Usual: Piracy and Commerce in Failed States;
* The Risks of Acting and Waiting: Democracy Promotion and State Failure; and
* The Limits of Accuracy: Models and Assumptions of Failed States Indexes.
Click here for the papers by Jack Goldstone: 'Notes on Assessing and Forecasting State Failure' and Barbara Harff': 'Explaining and Preventing the Holocaust, Genocides, Politicides and Holodomors'
For the first dialogue, The Unrelenting Logic of Business as Usual: Piracy and Commerce in Failed States, Professor William Zartman (Professor Emeritus at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advance International Studies of the Johns Hopkins University) and Professor Ahmed I. Samatar (James Wallace Professor and Dean of the Institute for Global Citizenship at Macalester College) were invited to think about what happends when a state collapses. The initial questions for the dialogue between Zartman and Samatar assummed that when a state collapses it does not remain isolated from the international community, but rather changes its relationships in and outwardly: the monopoly of violence of the state is privatized and their actors remain or become part of “international networks”, ultimately posing a security risk. What are the new relationships that evolved in an institutional vacuum, if any? In addition to to the usual suspects -terrorists, drug dealers and arms dealers- what other international actors take advantage of collapsed states? Are there implicit commercial and strategic advantages of failed states for certain industries and for other governments? What are the relationships between legal and illegal economic activities in the absence of state institutions? Is it possible to argue that the logic separating legal and illegal activity in a normal state is reconstituted via other means in a collapsed state?
These questions are not motivated merely by intellectual curiosity. Piracy aggravated by a state failure poses major international security risks and costs to the global economy dearly. It is no surprise that the United Nations Security Concil has called for countries and regional organizations to fight piracy and has authorized for a period of time that States cooperating with the Transitional Federal Government of the Republic of Somalia may “enter the territorial waters of Somalia for the purpose of repressing acts of piracy” and use “all necessary means to represss acts of piracy.”1 Piracy, as Peter Chalk reminds us, “has a direct economic impact in terms of fraud, stolen carges, delayed trips, and higher insurance premiums… it could potentially undermine a maritime state’s trading ability.”2 Although nobody knows for certain, it is estimated that only the shipping industry pays $16 billion a year in piracy costs, which is seen currently as the “inevitable costs of doing business.”3
For the second dialogue, Robert I. Rotberg (Adj. Professor of Public Policy, Director of the Program on Intrastate Conflict and Conflict Resolution, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard); and Thomas Carothers (Vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace overseeing Carnegie Europe, the Middle East Program, and the Democracy and the Rule of Law Project) were invited to reflect on which circumstances promoting democracy by the international community –a social engineering project per excellence- may increase the risk of state failure. The initial questions for the dialogue between Rotberg and Carothers took seriously one of the findings conducted by the State Failure Task Force, now known as the Political Instability Task Force (PITF), which has found that partial democracies are more prone to failure than full democracies and autocracies. If this is true, then there a risk that general democratization reforms urged by the international community may be counterproductive in certain cases, even potentially leading to state failures? What are the long-term risks of not acting to promote democracy in autocratic regimes? Should the risk of state failure mitigate the policy of democracy promotion? What are the existing relationships and coordination between initiatives to avoid state failure when promoting democracy and planning?
Needless to say, these questions are not motivated by a dislike toward democracy promotion initiatives. The questions aimed to reflect on the possibilities of refining democracy promotion initiatives - a social engineering endeveour per excellence.
For the third dialogue, the Heinrich Böll Foundation North America invited Barbara Harff (Professor of Political Science Emerita at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis and Distinguished Visiting Professor (2003, 2005) at the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Clark University), and Jack A. Goldstone (The Virginia E. and John T. Hazel Jr. Professor at the George Mason School of Public Policy). The initial questions for the dialogue between Harff and Goldstone asked them to address the models and instruments for measuring and forecasting failure. What are the challenges in identifying cases, testing explanations, identifying risk assessments and early warnings for genocide prevention? What are the assumptions, strengths and limitations of models used in developing an index to measure state failure? What are the possibilities and challenges of working with a multilateral index for state failure based on the groundbreaking project the State Failure Task Force, now known as the Political Instability Task Force (PITF).
These questions were prompted by the conviction that a comparative analysis among the available indexes attempting to measure state failure would be timely in order to discuss the reliability of indexes for policy decisions. It was considered advisable to discuss whether, in addition to the existing indexes, a truly multilateral and participatory index to measure state failure could be developed.
The Heinrich Böll Foundation's guests, pionners and key contributors on state failure research, address and answers these questions with imaginative rigor. We share their papers here with the hope that their insights will help in advancing the debate and foster sound policy decisions on the challenges posed by failing states.
1 UN/Res/1816 (2008), June 2, 2008, Security Council
2 Peter Chalk, The Maritime Dimension of International Security: Terrorism, Piracy, and Challenges for the United States (RAND Project Air Force Strategy and Doctrine Program, 2008, at 15, http://www.rand.org/pubs/monographs/MG697
3 See. id. at 16
event details 'The Unrelenting Logic of Business as Usual: Piracy and Commerce in Failed States' with William Zartman and Ahmed I. Samatar
event details 'The Risks of Acting and Waiting: Democracy Promotion and State Failure' with Robert I. Rotberg and Thomas Carothers
event details 'The Limits of Accuracy: Models and Assumptions of Failed States Indexes ' with Barbara Harff and Jack Goldstone