State Failure and Regional Insecurity
The project studies the connections between state failure and the regional security situation.In cooperation with researchers from PRIO. Participants
Jens Chr Andvig
Axel Borchgrevink
Stein Sundstøl Eriksen
Ståle Ulriksen
State failure, manifesting itself in the inability of a state to maintain its monopoly of violence, has become a widespread phenomenon in several regions, including Central Asia/Afghanistan, the Caucasus, and Africa. While the weaknesses of the institutions of the state in question are an obvious dimension of state failure, there is also an important international dimension. In many of these cases, the failing states form part of regional complexes, where conflicts are interwoven and violence spills across borders.
Could the phenomenon of state failure be better understood through a focus on the regional context? To what extent could studies of regional security benefit from a focus on the capacities and vulnerabilities of the states involved? These are the questions to be explored in this Strategic Collaboration Programme.
Funding
Norges Forskningsråd
- Borchgrevink, Axel (2010). State strength on the Ethiopian border: Cross-border conflicts in the Horn of Africa,
in Harpviken, Kristian Berg [ed.], Troubled Regions and Failing States: The Clustering and Contagion of Armed Conflict, Comparative Social Research, Volume 27,
. Bingley,Emerald.p. 171-196. The article analyses conflict dynamics across three of Ethiopia’s borders: with Eritrea, Somalia and Sudan. It argues that differences in conflict dynamics can in part be understood as related to differences in state strength and state presence on both sides of the border. - Eriksen, Stein Sundstøl (2010). The Theory of Failure and the Failure of Theory: 'State Failure', the Idea of the State and the Practice of State Building,
in Harpviken, Kristian Berg [ed.], Troubled Regions and Failing States: The Clustering and Contagion of Armed Conflict, Comparative Social Research, Volume 27
. Bingley,Emerald .p. 27-50. This article provides a critique of the discourse of 'failed states' and outlines an alternative approach to studying state formation. - Andvig, Jens Chr (2010). Corruption and Conflict: Contrasting Logics of Collective Action,
in Harpviken, Kristian Berg [ed.], Troubled Regions and Failing States: The Clustering and Contagion of Armed Conflict, Comparative Social Research, Volume 27
. Bingley, Emerald.p. 77-102. Extensive corruption and civil wars are two different symptoms of state failure, but have most of the time been studied separately. This article systematically compares the organizational characteristics of the two phenomena as well as the various research efforts into them, with a focus on economic explanations. - Ulriksen, Ståle (2010). Webs of War: Managing Regional Conflict Formations in West Africa and Central Africa,
in Harpviken, Kristian Berg [ed.], Troubled Regions and Failing States: The Clustering and Contagion of Armed Conflict, Comparative Social Research, Volume 27
. Bingley, Emerald.p. 355-380. This article argues that many armed, non-state groups in West Africa and Central Africa should be seen as regional actors, and thus that conventional two-level analysis does not catch the complexity of conflict in those regions. - Andvig, Jens Chr (2008). Corruption in Sub-Saharan Africa and its sources of evidence. NUPI Working Paper: 744. 58 pages. This paper deals mainly with present corruption in Sub-Saharan Africa and focuses on corruption in the public sector.