‘Fragile States’: introducing a political concept

Abstract

The special issue 'Fragile States: A Political Concept' investigates the emergence, dissemination and reception of the notion of 'state fragility'. It analyses the process of conceptualisation, examining how the 'fragile states' concept was framed by policy makers to describe reality in accordance with their priorities in the fields of development and security. The contributors to the issue investigate the instrumental use of the 'state fragility' label in the legitimisation of Western policy interventions in countries facing violence and profound poverty. They also emphasise the agency of actors 'on the receiving end', describing how the elites and governments in so-called 'fragile states' have incorporated and reinterpreted the concept to fit their own political agendas. A first set of articles examines the role played by the World Bank, the OECD, the European Union and the g7+ coalition of 'fragile states' in the transnational diffusion of the concept, which is understood as a critical element in the new discourse on international aid and security. A second set of papers employs three case studies (Sudan, Indonesia and Uganda) to explore the processes of appropriation, reinterpretation and the strategic use of the 'fragile state' concept.

A Global TrendEU‐style: Democracy Promotion in ‘Fragile’ and Conflict‐Affected South Caucasus

“…While ‘the very concept of fragility is still developing’ (Zulueta‐Fülscher, , p. 14), it has been the focus of scholarly and policy debate, since Helman and Ratner () drew attention to failed states. Nevertheless, a tacit agreement on defining and measuring fragile states seems to be emerging: ‘political disruption, institutional weakness, and economic collapse’ (Grimm, Lemay‐Hébert and Nay, , p. 205). The starting assumption that state fragility is closely connected with the state's monopoly over violence has led to classifying heterogeneous groups of states into a single category.…”

Rentier Statebuilding in a Post‐Conflict Economy: The Case of Kosovo

“…While keeping in mind the aforementioned legitimacy gap, this article analyses certain oft‐neglected economic themes in the statebuilding and peacebuilding literature, all related to the international governance of Kosovo in the first decade following the 1999 war, and hints at an alternative research agenda. While there has been much critical debate about liberal peacebuilding in the last decade, leading to innovative conceptualizations of the limits of the external imposition of political institutions on so‐called fragile or weak states (Grimm et al., ), critical scholars have recently been challenged to develop ‘sharper theoretical tools to understand and explain the complex empirical cases that are thrown up by the liberal peace’ (Heathershaw, : 275; see also Zaum, ). This article tries to contribute to this new wave of theorization by explicitly drawing from rentier state theory in economics and the impact of external inflows, exploring ‘the patterns of development and the nature of states in economies dominated by external rent’ (Mahdavy, : 428) .…”

Normal Peace: A New Strategic Narrative of Intervention

“…Imposing normalcy on 'abnormal' states then becomes a normal-even irrefutable-practice, which 'naturally' flows from the diagnostic posed by scholars and the various indices of state failure created to support these practices (Grimm, Lemay-Hébert, & Nay, 2014). The list of countries where normalcy was imposed by outside forces-either through peacebuilding missions or other forms of intervention-is long and covers all regions of the world.…”