Book Review: Fixing Failed States - A Framework for Rebuilding A Fractured World

BOOK REVIEW

Fixing Failed States: A Framework for Rebuilding A Fractured World

By Ashraf Ghani & Clare Lockhart. Oxford University Press. 2008.

What Lessons There Are for Sierra Leone?

Review by Sheka BANGURA

JICA Scholar (PhD)

Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University, Beppu, Japan

E-mail: shekabangs@yahoo.co.uk

---------------

Summary

In Fixing Failed States by Ashraf Ghani and Clare Lockhart, the attention of nations and the international community is brought to the realization and the need to be self-critical of the continued national and global insecurity caused by unresolved capability issues in states to supply basic public services to their people. It provides a compelling and informed conceptualization of what a real sovereign state is as opposed to nominal characterization of sovereignty. Their “sovereignty gap” abstraction is a useful metaphorical lens to the understanding of the dire situation in which the masses live in Third World nations. It constitutes an influential poverty theory in the authors’ laudable efforts at reviewing socio-economic and political circumstances in sixty states that have once failed, are failing, or have failed. The Book provides state transformative success stories and suggestions for those prepared to transform from failed into fulfilling states.

Defining “Failed States” and “Sovereignty Gap”

The authors argue that the state is at the heart of a nation’s advancement in terms of setting and enforcing requisite rules to guide the activities of a polity and an economy, and the sustainable provision of basic socio-economic requirements of its people. This role is untradeable as a fundamental basis to guarantee and sustain state legitimacy, and should be the guiding backdrop to any external assistance.

The Book defines a failed state as “government’s failure to provide even the most elementary means of survival, such as clean water, primary education and support of home grown food [for its people]…let a alone the tools that would really give a path  to advancement  such as higher education” (page 19). “The people…rendered powerless [in failed states] are victims of what we call the sovereignty gap—the disjunction between the de jure assumption that all states are ‘sovereign’ regardless of their performance in practice and the de facto reality that many are malfunctioning or collapsed states, and where the reciprocal set of rights and obligations are not a reality” (page 21). Countries with protracted crises could therefore merely be defined as nominal sovereign states. The authors’ conception of poverty lends credence to Rehman Sobhban (2006) and others’ perspective on the subject, who perceive poverty as entrenched injustice from above—viewing poverty as majorly a production function of decay in state apparatus and elite capture of societal resources. This is a structuralist view as opposed to the Darwinian poverty theory of blaming poverty on the poor themselves from a right-wing, neoclassical development perspective analyzed by Aminul Islam (2005) and Richard Peek & Elaine Hartwick (2009).

Reason for Failure of States since the Second World War

Briefly, according to the authors, the birth of development economics at the aftermath of the Second World War and the physical demise of colonial empires is a big disappointment given the rising poverty and inequality despite increasing opportunities from globalization and intensification of the information age. Illegitimate governments, patronage and corruption are key underpinnings of failing states, a context reinforced by the “promises and perils of aid” (page 85). They see a failed state as an instrument of wealth creation for private interest—for the pockets of rulers and their immediate families and cronies on the one hand; and the pockets of foreign businesses with whom national governments deal with, especially in resource rich but poor countries, on the other.   

It is inconceivable that global poverty could jump this much, with nearly one billion people going hungry by 2010 estimates, in the face of high density of development theories. To reflect on the incoherence and illogic of aid since 1945, the Book notes that while the successful Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe was a true demonstration of mental models expected of aid authorities, the aid approaches regarded as unproductive (and hence completely discarded) at the time were (and are) applied in the troubled states it examined. It also blames states’ failure on the Cold War which polarized the globe into pro-soviet and pro-western camps as a vehicle of bad governance, corruption, and poverty intensification in the developing world. “In this global context aid quickly became a means of rewarding rulers on the basis of whether their foreign policies supported or opposed one of the superpowers—rather than whether they were pursuing any particular development agenda…the global aid system did not even regard good governance as part of its agenda….Indeed, both the West and the Soviet Bloc actually preferred to work with dictatorial regimes…” (page 88). Thus, aid could have made a formidable fan and fuel of anarchy in poor nations.            

Deriving Source of Hope

Nonetheless, one can always find a way out of despair, poverty and underdevelopment. Having determined and visionary leadership with a true sense of altruism and positive nationalism seems to be the only panacea—leadership viewed from a “composite word” perspective that comprises an optimal number of political, administrative and economic architects that can steer a country’s cause to success. States such as Singapore, Ireland, and Federal States of Alabama, Mississippi and Georgia in the USA, as the authors put it, had failed yet emerged global economic powers. Other emerging reflections include India, China, Qatar and UAE. In Africa, Botswana and Rwanda are among the rising glow. These examples constitute, in the Book’s imagination, “an immense repertoire of techniques and technologies that could guide those who are seeking to initiate state reform, create stocks of institutional capacity, and ensure that their countries become an integral part of a globalizing world” (page 48). Endogenously and altruistically, these states decided that they would become real (than remaining nominal) sovereign states through imbibing a social justice character that formed the bedrock of their socio-economic and political strategies, hence their legitimacies.  

Among Key Instructive Strategies and Implication for Sierra Leone

The “rule of law” is a fundamental component of the ten functions of the state outlined by the authors. They state that “rules are resources just as finances are resources that the state can use to regulate key aspect of life for its citizenry. Without these rules, things would fall apart” (page 55). And an effective rule of law goes beyond making just “rules” and associated “institutions”, but their effective dispensation to make real difference in the lives of the people.  The authors’ emphasis on human capital development to drive states to prosperity is also indisputable, citing the growth and poverty-reducing difference that a developed middle-class in the US and Western Europe produced in those societies through investment in education and healthcare.         

The implication of this review for Sierra Leone is very obvious as it is a country presented with mammoth challenges to tangibly deliver public goods to her people as the only way to claim and restore legitimacy and be boastful of true sovereignty. It is instructive from the review that to be a failed state is an act of will on the part of rulers just as it is to be a fulfilling and successful state on them. It is indeed exciting to see in our country an emerging vibrancy in governance—a determined government, a strong opposition and a striking chord of activism from the media and civil society. As we go to the polls to elect leaders for our country (president, parliamentarians, councilors, etc) we should be reminded by this review that the real sovereignty of the state starts there; it requires true election, not just selection, of those capable to articulate concerns of the people and deliver expected services to them.

Sheka BANGURA

Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University