The Concept of "Failed State"

After the collapse of the Soviet Union at the beginning of the last decade of the last century, chaos prevailed in several regions of the world, in response to the collapse of a global pole in contrast to the rise of another in the restructuring of the post-Cold War world order, there were some countries based on the Eastern Bloc physically and diplomatically, as well as many conflicts that were pending until the collapse that triggered military movements leading to instability in several countries in different regions of the world.

Hence emerged in academic and political circles the concept of a "failed state", that discusses the extent to which the State as an institutional body can carry out its basic functions, such as: extending control over the entire geographical areas within its sovereignty, providing a certain number of services to its citizens, monopolizing the means of violence, the harmony of the constituent society of the people of this state, the stability of its economic situation, etc.

Academically, in the 1990s, the research by Stephen Ratener, Gerald Herman, and William Zartman referred to the concept of a "failed" or "collapsed" state, which led to an important theoretical debate about a different phase or type of state a particular society could be exposed to, a debate that is taking place in today's high tension swells in most geographical areas of the world, as well as the negative effects that may be caused by emergencies that may call the state a failure, like what we see as the enormous impact that the outbreak of the new Coronavirus has had on most countries of the world.

In practice, in 2005, the “Fund for Peace”, in partnership with “Foreign Policy” magazine, launched an index that seeks to categorize States by a standard gradient from the most failing to the most stable, depending on several criteria that determine the state's overall position on the index containing all nations of the world.

As with any phenomenon in the field of social and human sciences, there is no consensus on the conceptual dimensions of the term "failed state", because of the many applied and practical examples of it, and its development in conjunction with events taking place in many countries, in addition to the treatment of political theorists and analysts of this concept from divergent ideological and cultural points of view, but the cognitive and historical construction of the concept of a "failed state" generally focuses on the state's inability to perform one or more of its functions towards customary roles at the internal and external levels.

The State, as it is theoretically known, is based on four basic elements: land, people, political power, and international recognition, and if we are to scrutinize more closely the dialectic relationship between these pillars, we can say that the essence of the State, its form, the process of its daily survival and its associated historical and structural characteristics and features, are all based, to some extent, on the interaction of political power with the other three elements (pillars).

In other words, it is the nature of the relationship between the political elite and its institutional instruments and the pro/opposition social currents are what guarantee or do not guarantee political and social stability that refers to the legitimacy of the political system in question. The existence of an economic will and program leads to the utilization of material and cognitive potentials to achieve optimal use of resources on the surface and in the subsoil of the geographic area that houses the State, thus the State can manage the economic file and determine the role of the private sector in it. It is also the political authority that deals with legal figures at the international level (States, organizations, individuals), as it entails that the State should be an open actor to all parties by holding a similar distance from all its counterparts or be a founder or part of a hub with a different strategic vision than the other, or to be isolated and closed to itself, keeping its valid diplomatic and economic relations to a minimum.

Based on the above, "failed states" can be treated conventionally as a focus on the functional role of political power more than any other element of the state, by examining the authority's behavior towards local and regional entitlements.

Since the State is part of the international community, which includes parties that are brought together by certain interests and separated by others, this or that state may be affected by the state of polarization and political attractions that is a general feature governing the history of international relations since the formation of the nation-States in Europe after the Treaty of “Westphalia” in the mid-17th century, and this could lead the State in all its pillars to face the external challenges jeopardizing to have some implications on the level of the local situation, such as economic sanctions, resource depletion, and military blackmail as a result of its accession to one axis or one alliance, whether forced to do so or of its own choosing. All of this means that the functions of political power can be negatively affected by external circumstances in the first place, which may lead them to eventually transform into a failed state.

Like any theoretical analysis, there are some gaps and contradictions in the concept of a "failed state", since the criteria put forward by some institutions and some analysts to classify states as failed or stable are not based on the historical context that has caused directly or indirectly the emergence and development of these standards, nor do they explain why third world countries (Africa, parts of Latin America and Asia) include the largest number of failed states, does this not indicate a common historical situation?

It is very important to talk about criteria for measuring the failure of States within economic, political, social, and security indicators if these criteria are based on a causal interpretation of events contained in individual States, even if they require a reference to understanding the roots of this phenomenon - whether negative or positive - in the State to be classified, including the extent of external influence on the social and economic process, the impact of the association of political elites with external actors on the political and security stability of the society concerned, as well as an understanding of the nature of trade and financial relations between States, whether they are based on mutually beneficial grounds, or unilateral exploitation and unequal exchange.

Thus, the use of criteria with only quantitative (numerical) content would not result in an accurate characterization of the State concerned and its classification on the table of failed States, but rather an in-depth historical and social reading to understand the causal nature of the failure to overcome it; This is through a consensual mechanism established by international organizations within the provisions of international law.

In conclusion, the perception of a state as a failed state does not necessarily mean that it is experiencing a state of insecurity or military conflict in the form of civil war or proxy war or both, which is based on ethnic and regional divisions fed by regional and international parties, although this is the general framework for the characterization of the countries at present, at least at the media level, still, there are other criteria such as levels of economic development, political representation, and organization, the size and level of social welfare, etc., as mentioned above, it is necessary to look at the causes of these standards so that the definition of a failed state is not limited to a technical and procedural definition separate from reality.