Governance and Political Adaptation in Fragile States

In this chapter, we put forward four big-picture explanations for the fragility of contemporary postcolonial African states. First, we discuss the highly flawed and historically racist Hamitic hypothesis. Second, we examine the well-meaning but still highly limited path-dependence argument presented by theorists of the dependency school of development theory, whose conclusions we present but do not share. Third, we discuss the problem of intrusive liberalism, whose ruthless “disciplinary” interventions have transformed postcolonial Africa into a political platform where the everyday lived experiences of the people (and the governments) are subjected to Eurocentric civilizational scrutiny. Finally, we conclude by making a case for a shift of emphasis from intrusive liberalism to a hybrid developmental strategy that borrows from the best practices of western humanitarianism and the indigenous governance models of the peoples of sub-Saharan Africa and without losing sight of the resilience of the peoples in conditions of fragility in Africa.

In complex ethnic landscapes—wherein the boundaries inside a mosaic of salient identity groups are pillared, impermeable, and determined along fixed-identity markers—pathological homogenization often emerges as the only practical mode for political integration. Thus, a cascading series of nationalist conflicts that ultimately result in the realization of a set of ideal nation-states—a national cascade. This is the process that occurred during the Wars of Religion in Western Europe and the decay of multiethnic empires in Central and Eastern Europe, and this zero-sum dynamic is fuelling the identity-driven conflicts that today pervade many regions consisting of postcolonial fragile states. Such pathological national cascades are intractable by foreign interventions, and Western-style electoral democracy is ill-equipped to result in inclusive governance when elections are little more than ethnic censuses. Nation-building, then, is a prerequisite for state-making. But nation-building requires inclusive institutions that enable crosscutting affiliations and the capacity to aggregate, articulate, and channel the demands of all salient social forces. Thus, a paradox of modernization: as nation-building is a prerequisite for state-making, so too is state-making a prerequisite for nation-building. This chapter argues that the modern state has transcended the classic Weberian conception of the coercive state. Instead, a modern state is the centrally administered, functionally differentiated, and internationally recognized set of institutions within a given territory that is concerned with the maintenance of order among social forces across the spectrum of social power. When conceived as such, stability is highly concomitant with the state, the boundaries of identity become highly tangible, and the networks upon which public goods are provided and national identity are consolidated. It presents a theory of the modern nation-state to explain the ubiquitous nature of fragility and political adaptation. Thus, rather than tell a story of state fragmentation, the instability and identity-driven conflict pervading much of the postcolonial developing world are presented as a central determinant of nation-state formation.

The ‘state fragility’ lens is going through a major existential crisis at the moment. Traditional state fragility indexes are increasingly seen as the extension of the privileged few’s willingness to regulate societies outside of the Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) area, and the results are being increasingly questioned and rejected by both scholars and practitioners. This has led to a new interest in the resilience and risk management discussion by numerous actors involved in the business of ranking states’ performance. This turn to resilience can be interpreted as both an understanding by many actors of the limits of traditional governance and capacity-building but also as recognition of the new opportunities for the governance of war-torn states. As such, I argue that the ‘fragility as resilience’ framework operates through a twin conception of securitisation: securitisation of the other—pathologising specific states and societies while legitimising international interventions—and securitisation of the self—moving towards new risk mitigation strategies. This chapter concludes on a case study of Haiti, analysing the logics at play behind the ‘fragility as resilience’ framework.

The prospects for grounding forms of governance responsive to socio-economic rights claims are dependent on dynamics of bargaining, negotiating, and engaging with local elites who mediate the potential relationship between interest articulation by local citizens and potentially emancipatory forms of intervention by the international community. These dynamics are explored in the context of East Timor. This chapter explores the liberal-legalist processes of trial and truth commission (the Commission for Reception, Truth, and Reconciliation [CAVR] truth commission and Special Panels for Serious Crimes) pursued there to account for pro-Indonesian violence in the early 2000s and persistent subordination of these international models of transitional justice to the very different development rationales of early Timorese governments that foregrounded reconciliation with its major trading partner in Jakarta. It furthermore explores the contemporary reality of an East Timor exploiting its vast oil reserves where the government consistently circumvents the complex regulatory regime designed by the international community to safeguard transparency in spending resource wealth to fund clientelist networks. In so doing, it contends that localised forms of elite political socialisation enjoying their own forms of rationality and legitimacy will inevitably mediate, compromise, or bend even thoroughly revised forms of liberal intervention like transitional justice in ways that have ambiguous benefits for marginalised communities.

This chapter explains the challenges and possibilities in Somalia’s attempts to redesign its “ungovernable” spaces. It is therefore a story about the journey of Somalia that explores its ethno-political and religious spaces, as well as a story about the resilience that has come to characterise political governance and the struggles for the consolidation of democracy. That said, this chapter begins with a discussion of the colonial and postcolonial struggles to adopt democratic governance and the ongoing search for stability (as a requisite condition for democratic governance) in Somalia. The discussion then turns to an examination of the various “Somali-style” and other governance models that were attempted in each regime’s search for political legitimacy. I identify the histories as well as patterns of political adaptation and resistance to the neoliberal peace project prescribed by the international community for each of these regimes. Thereafter, I examine the country’s use of indirect political representation as a tool for the promotion of democratic electoral participation in the aftermath of the political transitions. It concludes with a discussion of the roles that Somali civil society has played in the expansion of the governable political space in Somalia.

Over its 70 years of existence as an independent sovereign nation, Pakistan has failed to resolve the centrifugal issues that it began grappling with at independence. Significant disagreement about Islam’s role and place in the state remains, ethnic and sectarian rivalries continue to challenge its unity, and the threat of military intervention is ever present. Since 1947, Pakistan has experienced four military regimes, spanning almost half its political life. This chapter presents the case that the roots of much of the conflict Pakistan continues to confront have a constitutional connection and are grounded in its constitutional history. Starting with the failure of the first Constituent Assembly to deliver a constitution after seven years of deliberations, the chapter proceeds to look at the three constitutions that followed in terms of their ongoing ambivalence towards Islam as the marker of Pakistani identity and statehood, their inability to deliver a working relationship between the centre and the provinces, and their lack of mechanisms to check executive overreach and keep the military out of politics. Pakistan serves as an object illustration of the importance of constitutional design and constitutional politics.

Only a short time ago, the press described President Idriss Déby’s regime in Chad as isolated, illegitimate, and barely clinging to power. Yet, while the 2000s were punctuated by coup attempts, armed insurrections, and mass desertions in the Chadian armed forces, today Déby has upgraded his country’s status into being an assertive and critical regional player. The Chadian President has profited from the incentives set out by the international community to intervene in a variety of African crises (i.e., Mali, Central African Republic [CAR], and Nigeria), helping consolidate his—until recently—tenuous position at home and abroad. Chad is the current representation of the hackneyed phrase, “African solutions to African problems”. However, one must not forget that Chad’s meteoric rise has been facilitated by important states in the international system, mainly France but also the United States. The emergence of Déby’s Chad depends both on its ability to accomplish sub-imperial tasks encouraged by these actors, while obfuscating undemocratic governance and human rights abuses at home. Nonetheless, Déby’s role in regional security has helped him achieve a certain degree of agency in his relationship with the international community, one that would appear on the surface as highly asymmetric. In reality, Chad’s military interventions are a combination of desire on the part of the international community to stabilize the Sahel along with the result of diverse spectrum of elite Chadian interests to gain legitimacy and maintain control of the state. These range from “liberal” desires to help control the region’s trouble spots in places like Mali, to clearly illiberal meddling in the domestic affairs of neighbors like the CAR, with the fight against Boko Haram somewhere in the middle. This chapter seeks to shed light on the dramatic change in Chad’s rise from “fragile” state to regional hegemon, without losing sight of its subordinate position in the international system. To do this, we examine two of Chad’s recent military interventions (Mali and CAR) and portray them within the context of apparently competing liberal and illiberal interests. This leads us to a better explanation of Déby’s recent rise at home and abroad. The focus of the book is political adaptation in the fragile spaces. We want to see an explanation of Chad’s intervention in Mali and CAR through this framework. One way to do this is to focus on the implications of Chad’s regional status for the meaning of fragility: is Chad trying to get out of being branded a fragile state? Is Chad’s promotion of liberal peace in the region aimed at changing the external (mostly western) understanding of Chad as a fragile state?

The majority of Small Island Developing States (SIDS) are democracies; however, a few SIDS have experienced coups and subsequent installation of authoritarian regimes. After Fiji, Seychelles, and Maldives attained independence from Great Britain in the 1960s–1970s, coups and features of authoritarianism emerged there at different times. Fiji is located in the Pacific Ocean and has a multiethnic population of over 800,000 people. Maldives and Seychelles are located in the Indian Ocean with populations of over 400,000 and 93,000 people, respectively. The post-coup, single-party, and/or one-man rule regimes in the three countries are examples of authoritarian rule. Eventually, the three countries returned to multiparty elections which were manipulated to serve particular interests. A look at the course back to multiparty electoral democracy in the aftermath of coups shows that instead of democracy, the new, modern, and hybrid forms of authoritarianism—such as authoritarian elections, competitive authoritarianism, and electoral autocracy—emerged. An analysis of the conduct of multiparty elections shows executive interference in elections through repressive laws, judicial manipulation, interference in the independence of electoral bodies, politicised disciplined forces, and lack of separation of the state and ruling party including state-sponsored media, which led to multiparty elections resulting in an autocratic government rather than an electoral democracy.

Solomon Islands has since 2003 been the object of intensive neo-liberal state-building by the Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands (RAMSI). RAMSI’s state-building programme (until 2013) included sustained efforts to support the consolidation of liberal political institutions including parliamentary democracy and a Westminster state system. Despite efforts to regularise formal politics through a comprehensive democratic governance programme, one of the most notable developments in post-tensions Solomon Islands has been the way political elites have worked to adapt formal political institutions to align with local political economies and power dynamics. Such efforts have been most apparent with the rise of Constituency Development Funds (CDFs)—state sanctioned, discretionary development funds provided to Members of Parliament (MPs) on an electorate basis to support local-level development. Such funds have grown exponentially since the mid-2000s and are now of a scale that they are redefining the structure of the formal state, the nature of state-society relations, and the type of social contract constituted in Solomon Islands. Drawing on case study and field research conducted since 2010, this chapter examines the growth of CDFs as a form of reverse political adaption. It explores how externally supported liberal governance institutions have provided opportunities for local elites to develop new Melanesian state forms. It will be argued that CDFs have helped underwrite a distinct form of political order in post-conflict Solomon Islands that is nominally liberal but in practice has had the effect of consolidating illiberal political and development dynamics.