roundtable discussion
Tuesday, November 18, 2008, Washington, DC

with speakers:

Robert I. Rotberg, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University
Tom Carothers, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

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.

To advance 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 second talk will address the risks of state failure due to democracy promotion initiatives. Research conducted by the State Failure Task Force, now known as the Political Instability Task Force (PITF), has found that several factors such as patterns of development, and types of ideology have played a role in certain cases of state failure, though for the global analysis the most important factor has been the type of regime. According to PITF, partial democracies are more prone to failure than full democracies and autocracies. If this is true, then is 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?