Archive / Working Paper
Failing States or Failed States? The role of development models: collected works
08/02/2006 By Martin Doornbos, Silvia Roque, Susan Woodward
In recent years the notion and phenomenon of ‘failing’ states - states incapable to fulfil the basic tasks of providing security for their populace -, has been rapidly drawing attention.
The incidence has been on the increase especially among countries of the South, and particularly, though not exclusively, in Africa.
Among the explanations offered, fragility of state structures, lack of capacity and ‘bad’ governance have been recurrent ingredients put forward, though each of these inevitably begs further queries: why are they fragile to begin with, why is there this lack of capacity, and so forth.
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Keywords
Development cooperation Failed states Fragile stateBio author: Martin Doornbos
Martin Doornbos is also Visiting Professor of Development Studies at Mbarara University of Science and Technology in Uganda. He has extensively researched on state-society dynamics in Africa (especially in the Horn and in Uganda) and India, with a particular focus on the state-identity nexus.
Bio author: Silvia Roque
BA in International Relations from the School of Economics of the University of Coimbra. She currently participates in the project "Peacebuilding Processes and State Failure Strategies: lessons learned from the former Portuguese colonies" (Peace Studies Group, University of Coimbra) financed by the Ford Foundation and directed by Jose Manuel Pureza. The main objective of this project is to analyse the impact of the donor's cooperation politics on the consolidation or weakening of the statebuilding processes of three of the Portuguese former colonies: Mozambique, Angola and Guinea-Bissau.
Bio author: Susan Woodward
Professor of Political Science, The Graduate Center, City University of New York. A specialist on the Balkans, her current research focuses on transitions from war to peace, state failure, and post-war state-building.
