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Key Text Fragile States: State Building is Not Enough

Author: Louise Anten
Date: 2009
Size: 11 pages (500 KB)

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Summary

What are the likely future trends for fragile states? What policy implications do these trends have for international actors? This paper from Clingendael examines the reasons for international interest in fragile states and past and future trends in state fragility. It argues that state fragility will probably increase in the coming decades and that focusing on statebuilding is not sufficient to address this problem. Instead, the industrialised states will also have to effectively address external factors leading to state fragility that they themselves are largely responsible for.

Increased interest in fragile states stems from both national interests and development concerns and masks different and sometimes opposing objectives in combating state fragility. Developmental approaches tend to limit themselves to internal causes and remedies for fragile states. National interest approaches tend to focus on stabilisation of the security situation in fragile states. Both approaches tend to neglect the impact of external factors in creating and maintaining state fragility. Highly developed countries are best placed to mitigate these factors and help to successfully reduce fragility and facilitate security and development.

The number of states affected by internal armed conflict has decreased since 1990. At the same time, the number of UN peacekeeping missions has grown, reflecting increasing concern over the negative effects of local conflicts and fragile states. However, future trends for state fragility probably cannot be extrapolated from the decline in internal armed conflicts, since the decline need not be durable. In addition, trends are not positive in some of the global threats that likely affect fragile states:

Climate change may increase the risk of ‘natural’ shocks and tend to reinforce existing tensions within and between countries;
Water shortages create tensions, especially in regions where several countries rely on the same water sources;
Scarcities of energy, especially oil, pose a potentially destabilising factor; and
Economic crises strongly and negatively affect fragile states, with the sudden severe decline of economic growth a proven predictor of conflict and instability.

The Netherlands is set to address a number of policy implications relating to fragile states and uses an approach integrating security, governance and development interventions. However, questions remain as to how to make integrated approaches work effectively and the Netherlands still needs to integrate global threats into fragile states policies. Research institutions need to undertake additional work on the issues of early warning and monitoring and evaluation. More generally, international actors need to address the external risk factors for state fragility for which they are largely responsible:

Deep divisions between UN member states are likely to remain. Powerful international actors must ensure that geopolitical competition is not played out in countries that are too fragile to withstand such interference.
A stable global economic order is an important potential stabilising factor for state fragility. However, effective management of economic crises is largely absent from the analysis of international peacebuilding.
Climate management offers an area where the interests of the industrialised world and fragile states coincide. The wish to curb state fragility could act as an additional incentive for the industrialised world to effectively address climate change issues.

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Source: Anten, L., 2009, 'Fragile States: State Building is Not Enough', Clingendael Conflict Research Unit, The Hague, The Netherlands
Author: Louise Anten , lanten[at]clingendael.nl
Organisation: Netherlands Institute of International Relations 'Clingendael', http://www.clingendael.nl