Failing States

Political scientist Rainer Tetzlaff of the University of Hamburg in a essay "Staats- und Zivilisationszerfall" (State and Civilization Collapse) posits a six-step process of "social regression" that he bases on his studies of "failing states" in Africa.  His essay appears in Hans Küng, et al, Friedenspolitik: Ethische Grundlagen internationaler Beziehungen (2003). 

Among the most severe cases of failing states in Africa he includes the Sudan, Congo-Zaire, Rwanda, Burundi, Somalia and Sierra Leone.  he uses the recent history of Zimbabwe as a case study of social regression.

His six steps are:

1. The loss of the "monopoly of force" by the state.  This is the sort of disintegration or fragmentation of society into rule by warlords, gangsters and terrorists that we in America have had occasion to become familiar with in Afghanistan.

2. The emergence of the "law of the fist" and a resulting "social anomie."

3. A flourishing of a subsistence economy, with networks of smugglers as we also see in Afghanistan with their opium trade that has been doing quite well indeed in the wake of Bush's 2001 intervention there.  (Which I supported, if that makes any difference to anyone.)

4. The rise of dictatorship, which can coexist with warlordism, and "Bevormundung," by which he means that state making up the citizens' minds for them.

5. The collapse of those institutions and processes that are broadly desribed as "civil society," resulting in "social polarization" and "Selbstprivilegierung."  (German normally uses more words than English for things, but it also can combine words creatively like this one.  It means literally "self-privileging," which is a great short form of expressing the concept of kleptocracy.  Think Dark Lord Dick Cheney and Halliburton extended by several degrees.)

6. Finally, a process of de-civilizing occurs as a result of the collapse of state authority and war, civil and otherwise.  This leads to the "exclusion and destruction of 'enemy' groups."

The phenomenon of failed states is important to understand, especially for those countries where the governments take seriously the long-term problems of terrorism, nuclear nonproliferation and prevention of war.

Someday, we in the United States may have a government like that again.