Failing States 1 - The Unrelenting Logic of Business as Usual: Piracy and Commerce in Failed States

Roundtable Discussion
Monday, 27 October 2008, noon-2pm

with speakers:
William Zartman, Johns Hopkins University
Ahmed I. Samatar, Macalester College

With approximately two billion people living on the verge of institutional collapse in fragile states, state failures are a daily tragedy that affect their inhabitants and put in question the stability of the state system. Strengthening weak states and preventing state failure are urgent tasks for the 21st century.

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 also posing a security risk.

To contribute in advancing the debate on this topic, the Heinrich Böll Foundation is organizing the Talk Series entitled 'The (Un)Making of Failing States: Profits, Risks and Measures of Failure'. The first talk 'The Unrelenting Logic of Business as Usual: Piracy and Commerce in Failed States' addressed what happened at the point of collapse. What are the new relationships that have evolved in an institutional vacuum? Which other international actors take advantage of collapsed states besides the usual suspects (terrorists, drug dealers, arms dealers)? Are there implicit commercial and strategic advantages for industry and other governments? What are the relationships between legal and illegal economic activities in a failed state? Can the logic normally separating a legal and an illegal activity be reconstituted via other means in a collapsed state?

 
 

William Zartman served as the Jacob Blaustein Professor of International Organizations and Conflict Resolution at the Paul Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) for nearly 20 years and he is the former director of SAIS Conflict Management and African Studies programs. He also has worked as a consultant to the U.S. Department of State and is the past president of the Middle East Studies Association and the American Institute for Maghrib Studies.

Ahmed I. Samatar is James Wallace Professor and Dean of the Institute for Global Citizenship at Macalester College. His expertise is in the areas of global political economy, political and social thought, and African development, is the author/editor of five books and over thirty articles, including "The African State: Reconsiderations" (Heinemann, 2002) and "Somalia: State Collapse, Multilateral Intervention, and Strategies for Political Reconstruction" (Brookings Institution, 1995).

-Click here to download William Zartman's text
-Click here for the second roundtable discussion 'The Risks of Acting and Waiting: Democracy Promotion and State Failure' with Robert I. Rotberg and Thomas Carothers
-Click here for the third roundtable discussion 'The Limits of Accuracy: Models and Assumptions of Failed States Indexes ' with Barbara Harff and Jack Goldstone