Failed state

A failed state is a state that has lost its ability to fulfill fundamental security and development functions, lacking effective control over its territory and borders. Common characteristics of a failed state include a government incapable of tax collection, law enforcement, security assurance, territorial control, political or civil office staffing, and infrastructure maintenance. When this happens, likely consequences include widespread corruption and criminality, the intervention of state and non-state actors, the appearance of refugees and the involuntary movement of populations, sharp economic decline, and military intervention from both within and outside the state.

The term was initially applied in the 1990s to characterize the civil war in Somalia. The country descended into disorder following a coup that ousted its dictator Siad Barre in 1991, leading to internal conflicts among the country's clans. In the early 2020s, Afghanistan, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Haiti, Libya, Mali, Myanmar, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen have all been described as failed states.

Various metrics have been developed to describe the level of governance of states, with significant variation among authorities regarding the specific level of government control needed to consider a state as failed. In 2023, the Fund for Peace think tank identified 12 countries in its most susceptible categories on the Fragile States Index. Formally designating a state as "failed" can be a controversial decision with significant geopolitical implications.

The term "failed state" originated in the 1990s, particularly in the context of Somalia's turmoil after the overthrow of its dictator Siad Barre in 1991. The phrase gained prominence during the American-led intervention in Somalia in 1992. It was used to express concerns about the potential collapse of poor states into chaotic anarchy after the end of the Cold War, as highlighted by Robert Kaplan's depiction of chaos in Liberia and Sierra Leone and his warning of a "coming anarchy" in various global regions.

According to the political theories of Max Weber, a state is defined as maintaining a monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force within its borders. When this is broken (e.g., through the dominant presence of warlords, paramilitary groups, corrupt policing, armed gangs, or terrorism), the very existence of the state becomes dubious, and the state becomes a failed state. The difficulty of determining whether a government maintains "a monopoly on the legitimate use of force", which includes the problems of the definition of "legitimate", means it is not clear when a state can be said to have "failed". The problem of legitimacy can be solved by understanding what Weber intended by it. Weber explains that only the state has the means of production necessary for physical violence. This means that the state does not require legitimacy for achieving a monopoly on having the means of violence (de facto), but will need one if it needs to use it (de jure).^{[citation needed]}

Typically, the term means that the state has been rendered ineffective and is not able to enforce its laws uniformly or provide basic goods and services to its citizens. The conclusion that a state is failing or has failed can be drawn from the observation of a variety of characteristics and combinations thereof. Examples of such characteristics include, but are not limited to, the presence of an insurgency, extreme political corruption, overwhelming crime rates suggestive of an incapacitated police force, an impenetrable and ineffective bureaucracy, judicial ineffectiveness, military interference in politics, and consolidation of power by regional actors such that it rivals or eliminates the influence of national authorities. Other factors of perception may be involved. A derived concept of "failed cities" has also been launched, based on the notion that while a state may function in general, polities at the substate level may collapse in terms of infrastructure, economy, and social policy. Certain areas or cities may even fall outside state control, becoming a de facto ungoverned part of the state.

No consistent or quantitative definition of a "failed state" exists; the subjective nature of the indicators that are used to infer state failure have led to an ambiguous understanding of the term. Some scholars focus on the capacity and effectiveness of the government to determine whether a state is failed. Other indices such as the Fund for Peace's Fragile States Index employ assessments of the democratic character of a state's institutions as a means of determining its degree of failure. Other scholars focus their argument on the legitimacy of the state, the nature of the state, the growth of criminal violence, the economic extractive institutions, or the states' capacity to control its territory. Robert H. Bates refers to state failure as the "implosion of the state", where the state transforms "into an instrument of predation" and effectively loses its monopoly on the means of force.

The measurement methods of state failure are generally divided into the quantitative and qualitative approach.