Category Archives: Africa
Recent Articles on Fragile States Worth Reading
See below for links on the DRC, Burundi, Pakistan, Azerbaijan, Mauritania, Libya, the relationship between ethnicity and corruption, a new synthesis of recent research, and the new structural economics. (more…)
More on Africa, Central Asia, Conflict and Security, South Asia
West Africa: Ethnic Divisions, State Fragility, and Regional Solutions
There has been a lot of bad news out of West Africa recently. Coup d’états have destabilized Mali and Guinea-Bissau. Nigeria has seen a series of terrorist attacks. Toureg rebels have conquered northern Mali and declared independence. Cote d’Ivoire is still recovering from its civil war. Meanwhile, there are reports about drug trafficking, al-Qaeda in the Maghreb, and a food crisis in the making.
No region in the world has more fragile states than West Africa. The region, which consists of the fifteen countries stretching from Senegal to Nigeria, exemplifies the problems of state building when surrounded by other fragile states. Pint-sized, expensive markets keep most countries isolated from the dynamic changes globalization is bringing elsewhere. The region’s aggregate GDP is roughly the same as Norway’s—despite having over fifty times more people. Although Ghana and Senegal have made significant political and/or economic gains in recent years, most of the other states have been rocked by war, ethnic or religious clashes, political unrest, famine, or serious economic dislocation at various times over the past two decades. (more…)
Legal Pluralism: Improving Security and Justice in Fragile States
Improving security and justice in fragile states is a major theme for political leaders, scholars, and donors. Foreign aid agencies have spent billions attempting to catalyze improvements in these areas within other countries. Yet despite this money and much hard work, the track record of past efforts has been paltry.
Why?
A large part of the reason can be traced to how these issues–and the concept of state building–is approached. (more…)
More on Africa, Capacity Building, Foreign aid, Fragile States, Governance, Review
City Development States: Why Lagos Works Better than Nigeria
Nigeria is not known for strong governance. On the contrary, it is arguably one of worse governed countries in the world, losing hundreds of billions of dollars to corruption and waste over the past four decades. Yet, it has two important governance achievements worth emulating.
First, it has devised a system of decentralization that has sharply reduced ethnic conflict. And second it has a major metropolis that increasingly is acting like one of a handful of city development states–large urban areas in developing countries that are driving progress forward in a way typically associated with well-managed central governments. (more…)
More on Africa, Economic Development, Governance
Initiating and Sustaining Developmental States in Africa
What policies and governance conditions are needed in Africa for it to match the economic and social achievements of Asia? This video, from a presentation at Johns Hopkins University, presents some answers. It presents the findings of two research projects, with important implications for the future of development in Africa. Note the focus on developmental states. It is the nature of the regime more than the way it gains power that matters. (more…)
More on Africa, East Asia, Economic Development, Foreign aid, Governance, Policies, Poverty, Videos
How Ethnic Divisions Become Political Fault Lines
What type of ethnic divisions and political circumstances are most likely to produce conflict?
There is no easy answer, but there are formulas that can provide a guide.
Joel D. Barkan, Professor of Political Science at the University of Iowa, provides a good one in his chapter on East Africa in the new book On the Fault Line: Managing Tensions and Divisions within Societies. He argues that the presence or absence of severe social divisions and their varying ‘depth’ is a function of the interplay between three variables: (more…)
Innovation in Institution Building: Scott Family Fellows
One of the largest problems in fragile states is how the government operates. There is a enormous shortage of capable managers and executives to staff key organizations. Externally driven initiatives aimed at improving capacity generally fall far short of expectations.
Recruiting professionals from outside the country to work either in specific positions or as special assistants to senior officials is one of the best ways to fill immediate needs, transfer skills, and encourage highly qualified people to relocate permanently to the country. Focusing on young members of the diaspora–including at times diaspora from neighboring countries–increases the chance that individuals will be familiar with local culture and conditions and will be interested in staying longer-term. (more…)
More on Africa, Capacity Building, Foreign aid, Fragile States, Governance, Policies
Best Links on Self-Declared State of Azawad in Mali
Tuareg rebels have declared the independence of the territory under their control in northern Mali, calling their country “Azawad.” Here are best links to information on the area available online: (more…)
New Book on the “Fault Lines” that Plague Fragile States
A new book edited by Jeffrey Herbst, Terence McNamee, and Greg Mills discusses what I consider the most important problem in fragile states: weak social cohesion. It looks at “fragmented and weak states, made up of many nations and cutting across geographical, racial and religious boundaries” and explores why some countries with potential “fault lines” produce conflict while others are better at managing them.
More than a dozen authors contribute case studies on a broad range of countries including South Africa, Northern Ireland, Iraq, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Kenya, India and even Canada and seek solutions that can be transferred elsewhere. (more…)
Côte d’Ivoire: How a Weak National Identity Stirs Conflict
Weak social cohesion and a weak national identity have plagued Côte d’Ivoire since the demise of its charismatic first president, Félix Houphouët-Boigny, in 1993. Once West Africa’s brightest economic star, the country was mired in a civil war for most of the 2000s due to the disenfranchisement of northerners. The fighting in 2011 that led to the end of the Laurent Gbagbo regime was the culmination of this process, but by no means the end of the state’s internal divisions.
Despite its dynamic growth in the 1960s and 1970s, the country depended far too much on Houphouët-Boigny for its unity. When he died, it was left without a sufficiently institutionalized state system of governance and sense of common identity. (more…)
More on Africa, Conflict and Security, Fragile States, Identity
