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The Colonial Foundations of State Fragility and Failure

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Polity

Abstract

The presence of failed states in the international system has increased, especially after the end of the cold war. Recent research demonstrates that state fragility and failure are strongly influenced by regime type, political instability, and economic growth. But these studies do not highlight the possibility that state fragility/failure is a function of historical path dependency. To address its prevalence and persistence in the modern world, we must focus on the unique histories of nation-states and examine how the colonial past may have led to substandard institutions and problematic state-society relations. Using an extensive dataset of nation-states in the developing world in order to conduct panel regression analyses, I find that state failure is largely a function of variations in the type of colonial rule and the duration of colonial control. British or Spanish rule, as well as the relative absence of European intervention into the polity, is associated with a lower risk of state failure, while French or Portuguese rule is associated with a higher risk. The findings imply that we need to reconsider our understanding of state failure; its very existence and persistence in the modern world are influenced by the historical process of colonialism and its institutional legacies.

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Notes

  1. James Fearon, “Do Governance Indicators Predict Anything? The Case of Fragile States and Civil War,” United States Institute of Peace: International Network for Networks and Economics, May 24, 2010, at http://inec.usip.org/resource/do-governance-indicators-predict-anything-case-%E2%80%9Cfragile-states%E2%80%9D-and-civil-war.

  2. Graziella Bertocchi and Andrea Guerzoni, “Growth, History or Institutions: What Explains State Fragility in Sub-Saharan Africa?” Journal of Peace Research 49 (2012): 769–83.

  3. Tiffiany Howard, “Failed States and the Spread of Terrorism in Sub-Saharan Africa,” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 33 (2010): 960–88.

  4. For example, see European Development Report, 2009, “Chapter 3: The Historical Roots of State Fragility,” in Overcoming Fragility in Africa: Forging a New European Approach, at http://erd.eui.eu/media/fullreport/ERD%202009_EN_LowRes.pdf; Graziella Bertocchi and Fabio Canova, “Did Colonization Matter for Growth?: An Empirical Exploration into the Historical Causes of Africa’s Underdevelopment,” European Economic Review 46 (2002): 1851–71; Bertocchi and Guerzoni, “Growth, History or Institutions?” (see note 2 above); Lisa Anderson, “States That Fail Before They Form,” Journal of International Affairs 58 (2004): 1–16; Nathan Nunn, “Historical Legacies: A Model Linking Africa’s Past to Its Current Underdevelopment,” Journal of Development Economics 83 (2007): 157–75; Matthew Lange, “British Colonial Legacies and Political Development,” World Development 32 (2004): 905–22.

  5. Olivier Nay, “Fragile and Failed States: Critical Perspectives on Conceptual Hybrids,” International Political Science Review 34 (2013): 326–41, at 329. While the terms might imply a major difference in degree (a fragile state could be seen as is one that is likely to fail), the standard practice in the literature is to treat the concepts as synonymous.

  6. See Natasha Ezrow and Erica Frantz, Failed States and Institutional Decay: Understanding Instability and Poverty in the Developing World (New York: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2013).

  7. Zaryab Iqbal and Harvey Starr, State Failure in the Modern World (Palo Alto, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2016), 14–22.

  8. Ezrow and Frantz, Failed States, 15–16 (see note 6 above).

  9. See Neil Englehart and Marc Simon, “Failing States and Failing Regimes: The Prediction and Simulation of State Failure/State Fragility,” in Dealing with Failed States: Crossing Analytical Boundaries, ed. Harvey Starr (New York: Routledge Press, 2009), 110–14. Englehart and Simon advocate a five-pronged approach in assessing state failure/state fragility for the policy community. They contend that the five elements that constitute state failure include: (a) the total collapse of governance, such as the failure of the state to control capital, natural resource extraction and distribution, and monopoly on the use of legitimate forces; (b) the collapse of state control over significant peripheral regions in terms of providing public goods and services; (c) the inability of the state to defend its internal borders from foreign intrusion (a manifestation of losing territorial sovereignty); (d) the inability of the state to enforce national laws on peripheral regions and deter corruption; and (e) the inability of the state to provide basic services such as health care, education, and basic infrastructure projects such as hygienic facilities in the community, roads, bridges, and basic infrastructure.

  10. Robert Rotberg, “The Failure and Collapse of Nation-States: Breakdown, Prevention, and Repair,” in When States Fail: Causes and Consequences, ed. Robert Rotberg (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2004), 5.

  11. Rotberg, “The Failure and Collapse,” 5–7 (see previous note). More specifically, Rotberg conceptualizes fragile/failed states as those (a) that resort to genocide or mass murder of citizens to create a semblance of political order; (b) that lack control over large swaths of territory with valuable natural resources vulnerable to looting from domestic or international non-state actors; (c) that cannot provide for the basic security needs of their citizens and are therefore prone to everyday acts of social violence including homicide, rapes, and theft of property; (d) that have dysfunctional institutions, which cannot pass effective laws that are uniformly enforced; or (e) that have non-functional infrastructure facilities, so that education, transport, and medical facilities are largely provided for by private agencies, rebel groups, or terrorist groups. According to Rotberg, having one of these criteria constitutes a fragile/failed state; he does not suggest that a continuum exists along which one can identify whether one state is more fragile than another state.

  12. Robert Rotberg, “The Failure and Collapse,” 12–17 (see note 10 above).

  13. Christian Bueger and Felix Bethke, “Actor-Networking the ‘Failed State’ – an Enquiry into the Life of Concepts,” Journal of International Relations and Development 17 (2014): 30–60; Olivier Nay, “Fragile and Failed States” (see note 5 above). See also Starr, Dealing with Failed States, 9 (see note 9 above).

  14. Timothy Besley and Torsten Persson, “The Origins of State Capacity: Property Rights, Taxation and Politics,” American Economic Review 99 (2009): 1218–44; Timothy Besley and Torsten Persson, “State Capacity, Conflict, and Development,” Econometrica 78 (2010): 1–34.

  15. Bertocchi and Guerzoni, “Growth, History, or Institutions?” (see note 2 above).

  16. Ibid., 781.

  17. Ibid., 777–78.

  18. Jeffrey Herbst, States and Power in Africa (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2000).

  19. See Nicola Gennaioli and Ilia Rainer, “The Modern Impact of Precolonial Centralization in Africa,” Journal of Economic Growth 12 (2007): 185–234.

  20. Valerie Bocksette, Areendam Chanda, and Louis Putterman, “States and Markets: The Advantage of An Early Start,” Journal of Economic Growth 7 (2002): 347–69.

  21. Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson, The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty: Why Nations Fail (New York: Crown Press, 2012).

  22. Michael Havinden and David Meredith, eds., Colonialism and Development: Britain and its Tropical Colonies, 1850–1960 (New York: Routledge, 1993); A. Adu Boahen, African Perspectives on Colonialism (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989).

  23. Nathan Nunn, “The Long-Term Effects of Africa’s Slave Trades,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 123 (2008): 139–76.

  24. Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, and James Robinson, “The Colonial Origins of Comparative Development: An Empirical Investigation,” American Economic Review 91 (2001):1369–1401; Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, and James Robinson, “Reversal of Fortune: Geography and Institutions in Making of the Modern World Income Distribution,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 117 (2002):1231–94.

  25. Acemoglu, Robinson, and Johnson, “The Colonial Origins,” 1370 (see previous note).

  26. Rotberg, “The Failure and Collapse,” 17 (see note 10 above).

  27. Robert Bates, “The Logic of State Failure: Learning from Late Century Africa,” in Starr, Dealing with Failed States, 17–34 (see note 13 above).

  28. Zaryab Iqbal and Harvey Starr, “Bad Neighbors” (see note 13 above); Iqbal and Starr, “State Failure.”

  29. Benjamin Most and Harvey Starr, “Diffusion, Reinforcement, Geopolitics, and the Spread of War,” American Political Science Review 74 (1980): 932–46; Harvey Starr and Benjamin Most, “Contagion and Border Effects on Contemporary African Conflict,” Comparative Political Studies 16 (1983): 92–117; Harvey Starr and Benjamin Most, “The Forms and Processes of Diffusion: Research Update on Contagion in African Conflict,” Comparative Political Studies 18 (1985): 206–77.

  30. Iqbal and Starr, “Bad Neighbors,” 325 (see note 13 above).

  31. Paul Collier, Breaking the Conflict Trap: Civil War and Development Policy (Washington, D.C.: World Bank and Oxford University Press, 2003). See also Zeynep Taydas, Dursun Peksen, and Patrick James, “Why Do Civil Wars Occur? Understanding the Importance of Institutional Quality,” Civil Wars 12 (2010): 195–217; Indra De Soysa, “Paradise is a Bazaar? Greed, Creed, and Governance in Civil War, 1989–99,” Journal of Peace Research 39 (2002): 395–416.

  32. Besley and Persson, “The Origins”; Besley and Persson, “State Capacity” (see note 14 for both sources). A feckless democracy, a term originally conceptualized by Thomas Carothers, pertains to a regime system where there are regular, competitive elections, but one in which citizens have low levels of participation because they lack political efficacy as a result of the corrupt activities of political elites and parties. See Thomas Carothers, “The End of the Transition Paradigm,” Journal of Democracy 13 (2002): 5–21.

  33. Bertocchi and Canova, “Did Colonization Matter? (see note 4 above).

  34. European Report on Development, “Overcoming Fragility in Africa,” Robert Shuman Centre for Advanced Studies, European University Institute (2009), at http://erd.eui.eu/media/fullreport/ERD%202009_EN_LowRes.pdf.

  35. Benno Ndulu, Stephen O’Connell, Robert Bates, Paul Collier, and Chukwuma Soludo, eds. The Political Economy of Economic Growth in Africa, 1960–2000 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009).

  36. James Fearon and David Laitin, “Ethnicity, Insurgency, and Civil War,” American Political Science Review 97 (2003): 75–90.

  37. Henrik Urdal, “A Clash of Generations? Youth Bulges and Political Violence,” International Studies Quarterly 50 (2006): 607–29, at 613.

  38. Ibid.

  39. Matthew Lange, Educations in Ethnic Violence: Identity, Educational Bubbles, and Resource Mobilization (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012).

  40. Iqbal and Starr, “Bad Neighbors” (see note 28 above); Iqbal and Starr, State Failure (see note 7 above).

  41. Bertocchi and Canova, “Did Colonization Matter?” (see note 4 above).

  42. Celso Furtado, The Economic Growth of Brazil: A Survey from Colonial to Modern Times (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1965); Joan Robinson, “Trade in Primary Commodities,” in Aspects of Development and Underdevelopment, ed. Joan Robinson (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1979); B. R. Tomlinson, “Imperialism and After: The Economy of the Empire on the Periphery,” in The Oxford History of the British Empire, Vol. 4: The Twentieth Century, ed. Judith Brown and W. R. Louis (Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press, 1999), 357–78.

  43. Robinson, “Trade,” 60–79 (see previous note).

  44. Immanuel Wallerstein, The Modern World-System: Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the European World-Economy in the Sixteenth Century, Vol. 1 (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2011); Rosemary O’Kane,” A Probabilistic Approach to the Causes of Coups d’Etat,” British Journal of Political Science 11 (1981): 287–308; Rosemary O’Kane, “Coups d’Etat in Africa: A Political Economy Approach,” Journal of Peace Research 30 (1993): 251–70; see also B. R. Tomlinson, “Imperialism” (see note 42 above).

  45. Jonathan Krieckhaus, Dictating Development: How Europe Shaped the Global Periphery (Pittsburgh, Pa.: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2006).

  46. Ibid., 6.

  47. Michael Bernhard, Christopher Reenock, and Timothy Nordstrom, “The Legacy of Western Overseas Colonialism on Democratic Survival,” International Studies Quarterly 48 (2004): 225–50.

  48. See Dennis Laumann, Colonial Africa: 1884–1994 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012); Muriel Chamberlain, The Scramble for Africa (New York: Routledge, 2014); Larry Diamond, “Introduction,” in Democracy in Developing Countries, Vol. 2: Africa, ed. Larry Diamond, Juan Linz, and Seymour Lipset (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1988), 1–32.

  49. Larry Diamond, Juan Linz, and Seymour Lipset, “Introduction,” in Politics in Developing Countries, Second Edition, ed. Diamond, Linz, and Lipset (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1995), 1–36; Bernhard, Reenock, and Nordstrom, “The Legacy,” 229–30 (see note 47 above).

  50. Bernhard, Reenock, and Nordstrom, “The Legacy,” 229–30 (see note 47 above).

  51. Ashraf Ghani and Clare Lockhart, Fixing Failed States: A Framework for Rebuilding A Fractured World (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008).

  52. Acemoglu and Robinson, “The Origins of Power,” 111–12 (see note 21 above).

  53. Patrick Ziltener and Daniel Künzler, “Impacts of Colonialism: A Research Survey,” Journal of World Systems Research 19 (2013): 290–311; James Feyrer and Bruce Sacerdote, “Colonialism and Modern Income: Islands as Natural Experiments,” Review of Economics and Statistics 91 (2009): 245–62; Ambeh Njoh and Fenda A. Akiwumi, “The Impact of Colonization on Access to Improved Water and Sanitation Facilities in African Cities,” Cities 28 (2011): 452–60; George Steinmetz, “The Sociology of Empires, Colonies, and Postcolonialism,” Annual Review of Sociology 40 (2014): 77–103.

  54. James Feyrer and Bruce Sacerdote, “Colonialism” (see previous note); Elise Huillery, “History Matters: The Long-Term Impact of Colonial Public Investments in French West Africa,” American Economic Journal: Applied Economics 3 (2009): 176–215.

  55. Bernhard, Reenock, and Nordstrom, “The Legacy” (see note 47 above); John Wiseman, Democracy in Black Africa: Survival and Revival (New York: Paragon House, 1990).

  56. The French did this too, as their colonial rule decreed that colonies could send representatives to the National Assembly, but this was usually cosmetic, as the representatives held no real political influence; see David Abernethy, The Dynamics of Global Dominance: European Overseas Empires, 1415–1980 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2000), 363–69.

  57. Bernhard, Reenock, and Nordstrom, “The Legacy,” 233 (see note 47 above).

  58. Ibid., 231; Matthew Lange, Lineages of Despotism and Development: British Colonialism and State Power (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), 18–19.

  59. Lange, Lineages, 31–39 (see previous note).

  60. Richard Price, Making Empire: Colonial Encounters and the Creation of Imperial Rule in Nineteenth-Century Africa (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 236–40.

  61. Some scholars argue that the British at first tried to curtail civic associationalism and that it was the British Protestant missionaries who forced the British to engage in nation-building efforts, such as the formation of “nonviolent anticolonial and nationalist organizations,” which were instrumental in building state capacity; see Robert Woodberry, “The Missionary Roots of Liberal Democracy,” American Political Science Review 106 (2012): 244–74.

  62. Price, Making Empire, 2–7 (see note 60 above).

  63. See Martin Thomas ed., The French Colonial Mind: Violence, Military Encounters, and Colonialism: Volume 1 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2012), xii–xxxvii; Martin Klein and Suzanne Miers, eds., Slavery and Colonial Rule in Africa: Studies in Slave and Post-Slave Societies and Cultures, 1–15 (New York: Frank Cass, 1998). See also Bernhard, Reenock, and Nordstrom, “The Legacy,” 230–31 (see note 47 above); Dietrich Rueschemeyer, Evelyne Stephens, and John Stephens, Capitalist Development and Democracy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004), 260–63.

  64. Jean Blondel, Comparing Political Systems (New York: Praeger, 1972), 169–72; Samuel Huntington, “Will More Countries Become Democratic?” Political Science Quarterly 99 (1984): 192–218; Seymour Lipset, Kyoung-Ryung Seong, and John Torres, “A Comparative Analysis of the Social Requisites of Democracy,” International Social Science Journal 136 (1993): 155–75; Kenneth Bollen and Robert Jackman, “Economic and Noneconomic Determinants of Political Democracy in the 1960s,” Research in Political Sociology 1 (1985): 27–48.

  65. Acemoglu and Robinson, The Origins of Power, 275–99 (see note 21 above).

  66. David Abernethy, The Dynamics, 372–81 (see note 56 above).

  67. Huntington, “Will More” (see note 64 above); Diamond, “Introduction” (see note 48 above).

  68. Philippa Levine, The British Empire: Sunrise to Sunset (New York: Routledge, 2013), 135–47.

  69. Bernhard, Reenock, and Nordstrom, “The Legacy” (see note 47 above).

  70. Ruth Collier, Regimes in Tropical Africa: Changing Forms of Supremacy, 1945–1975 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982), 95–102.

  71. Martin Thomas ed., The French Colonial, xii–xxxvii (see note 63 above).

  72. Diamond, “Introduction” (see note 48 above).

  73. J. P. Daughton, An Empire Divided: Religion, Republicanism, and the Making of French Colonialism, 1880–1914 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 3–24; see also Alice Conklin, A Mission to Civilize: The Republican Idea of Empire in France and West Africa, 1895–1930 (Palo Alto, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1997), 3–9.

  74. Gregor Muller, Colonial Cambodia’s “Bad Frenchmen”: The Rise of French Rule and the Life of Thomas Caraman, 1840–87 (New York: Routledge, 2006), 14–23.

  75. Matthew Lange, James Mahoney, and Mathias Vom Hau, “Colonialism and Development: A Comparative Analysis of Spanish and British Colonies,” American Journal of Sociology 111 (2006): 1412–62.

  76. Seymour Lipset and Jason Lakin, The Democratic Century (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2004), 281–310; Ezrow and Frantz, Failed States, 62–64 (see note 6 above).

  77. Lipset and Lakin, The Democratic Century, 285–90 (see previous note).

  78. Alexander Dawson, Latin America Since Independence: A History with Primary Sources (New York: Routledge University Press, 2010), 1–9.

  79. Evelyne Huber and John Stephens. Democracy and the Left: Social Policy and Inequality in Latin America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012), 5–12.

  80. Guillermo O’Donnell, Modernization and Bureaucratic-Authoritarianism: Studies in South American Politics (Berkeley: University of California, 1979), 17–34. This point is quite controversial in the literature. But based on O’Donnell’s assessment, dictatorships in Latin America generated strong state capacity, which was responsible for fostering political and social order that made it possible for them to modernize and achieve long-term economic growth.

  81. Bernhard, Reenock, and Nordstrom, “The Legacy” (see note 47 above).

  82. Zehra Arat, Democracy and Human Rights in Developing Countries (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Reiner, 2003), 61.

  83. However, it is an exercise in over-generalization to suggest that Spanish colonial rule, in general, generated the same results pertaining to democratic stability and state capacity as other states that were colonized. More specifically, it is true that former Spanish colonies experienced large scale instability because the strong state apparatuses that were established in Central America and the Caribbean largely decimated the political opposition and labor unions starting in the 1930s, stifling civic associationalism and political accountability. This explains some fractured states that emerged in the Caribbean and Central America and persisted into the 1980s, such as Nicaragua, El Salvador, and the Dominican Republic; see Rueschemeyer, Stephens, and Stephens, Capitalist, 72–88 (see note 63 above). It is also worth noting that detailed comparative-historical analyses argue that a longer Spanish colonial experience facilitated stronger sovereign states in Latin America because Spanish colonial authorities were engaged in eliminating indigenous populations in some areas as they systematically replaced parts of the population with settlers from Europe. See Lange, Mahoney, and vom Hau, “Colonialism” (see note 75 above); Erik Olin Wright, Class Counts: Comparative Studies in Class Analysis (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1997); see also Murdo J. MacLeod, “Aspects of the Internal Economy,” in The Cambridge History of Latin America, ed. Leslie Bethell (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press), 1984, 315–60.

  84. These were chiefly Colombia, Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Paraguay; these states also had weak civil societies.

  85. Howard Wiarda and Harvey Kline, eds., Latin American Politics and Development, 8 th Edition (New York: Westview Press, 2013), 17–22.

  86. Lange, Mahoney, and Vom Hau, “Colonialism” (see note 75 above).

  87. Ibid., 1441.

  88. Matthew Restall and Kris Lane, Latin America in Colonial Times (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 275–90.

  89. Bolivarianism is an ideology that emphasized the equitable distribution of resources for all citizens regardless of creed, race, or social standing; thus it instilled the virtue that all citizens have the same rights and privileges regardless of their specific background.

  90. Frank Safford, “Politics, Ideology and Society in Post-independence Spanish America,” in The Cambridge History of Latin America, Vol. 3: From Independence to c. 1870, 347–422 (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1985).

  91. Gretchen Helmke and Steven Levitsky, Informal Institutions and Democracy: Lessons from Latin America. (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006).

  92. Fernando López-Alves, State Formation and Democracy in Latin America, 1810–1900 (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2000).

  93. Earl Conteh-Morgan, Democratization in Africa (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1997), 39–44.

  94. Anthony Russell-Wood, The Portuguese Empire, 1415–1808: A World On the Move (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998).

  95. Éric Morier-Genoud and Michel Cahen, eds., Imperial Migrations: Colonial Communities and Diaspora in the Portuguese World (New York: Palgrave, 2012), 12–17; see also Gilberto Freyre, Casa Grande e Senzala [Masters and Slaves] (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986).

  96. Rosa Cabecinhas and João Feijó, “Collective Memories of Portuguese Colonial Action in Africa: Representations of the Colonial Past among Mozambicans and Portuguese Youths,” International Journal of Conflict and Violence 4 (2010): 28–44.

  97. Gilberto Freyre, Casa (see note 95 above); see also Robin Sheriff, Dreaming Equality: Color, Race, and Racism in Urban Brazil (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2001).

  98. Francis Fukuyama, “Stateness First,” Journal of Democracy 16 (2005): 84–88.

  99. John Burkett, Catherine Humblet, and Louis Putterman, “Preindustrial and Postwar Economic Development: Is There a Link?” Economic Development and Cultural Change 47 (1999): 471–95.

  100. Bocksette, Chanda, and Putterman, “States and Markets” (see note 20 above).

  101. Olukunle Owolabi, “Literacy and Democracy Despite Slavery: Forced Settlement and Postcolonial Outcomes in the Developing World,” Comparative Politics 48 (2015): 43–78.

  102. The fact that state failure measures are highly correlated with other measures of state capacity led some scholars to dismiss the utility and relevance of studying state failure as a distinct phenomenon. For example, state failure is often construed as a crude proxy for weak fiscal capacity that affects economic growth and political violence in general; see Olivier Nay, “Fragile and Failed States” (see note 5 above).

  103. Monty Marshall and Benjamin Cole, “State Fragility/Failure Index, 2012,” at www.systemicpeace.org/inscrdata.html, 2012.

  104. For a detailed description of the coding protocol of their index, refer to www.systemicpeace.org/inscr/SFImatrix2014c.pdf.

  105. A problem with the CPIA measure is that it conflates state strength as it exists indigenously with attributes of the state in response to external pressures from international aid agencies and communities. Furthermore, it equates the effects of external pressures with the domestic causes of state capacity. Despite its operational weaknesses, however, scholars have begun to acknowledge that this is a better measure of state fragility than its counterparts. In particular, the Failed State Index provided by the Foreign Policy organization is characterized by a “debilitating combination of weak governance, policies and institutions” that can lead to state collapse and state failure. Thus, the latter measure is seen as inchoate because it is related to weak state capacity; see Iqbal and Starr, “State Failure,” 15 (see note 7 above); Bertocchi and Guerzoni, “Growth, History, or Institutions?” (see note 2 above).

  106. Bertocchi and Guerzoni, “Growth, History, or Institutions?” (see note 2 above).

  107. Derived from World Bank Frequently Asked Questions on CPIAs, at http://www.worldbank.org/ida/IRAI/2011/webFAQ11.pdf. CPIA data derived from the World Bank Development Indicators, at data.worldbank.org/data-catalog/CPIA.

  108. Paul Hensel, ICOW Colonial History Data, available at www.paulhensel.org/icowcol.html.

  109. Ziltener and Künzler, “Impacts” (see note 53 above).

  110. Ibid., 290.

  111. Data derived from Encyclopedia Britannica, “Spanish Colonial Rule in Latin America,” Encyclopædia Britannica CD-DVD ROM version, Encyclopædia Britannica, 2013.

  112. Data derived from Valerie Bocksette, Areendam Chanda, and Louis Putterman, “The State Antiquity Index, 2013,” at http://www.brown.edu/Departments/Economics/Faculty/Louis_Putterman/antiquity%20index.htm; see also Bocksette, Chanda, and Putterman, “States and Markets” (see note 20 above).

  113. For more details about the method used in constructing the state antiquity score, refer to http://www.brown.edu/Departments/Economics/Faculty/Louis_Putterman/antiquity%20index.htm.

  114. Robert Bates, “The Logic” (see note 13 above); Iqbal and Starr, “Bad Neighbors” (see note 28 above); Bertocchi and Guerzoni, “Growth, History, or Institutions?” (see note 2 above)”.

  115. Rafael La Porta, Florencio Lopez-de-Silanes, Andrei Shleifer, and Robert Vishny, “The Quality of Government,” Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization 15 (1999): 222–79.

  116. Zaryab Iqbal and Harvey Starr, “Bad Neighbors” (see note 28 above).

  117. “World Bank Development Indicators, 2012,” at http://data.worldbank.org/data-catalog/world-development-indicators.

  118. Henrik Urdal, “A Clash of Generations?” (see note 37 above).

  119. Substituting the natural log of the population with the youth bulge variable in all the regression models did not alter the results presented in the analysis. All coefficients concerning the main independent variables remained statistically significant in the expected direction.

  120. Monty Marshall and Benjamin Cole, “State Failure/Fragility Index, 2012. www.systemicpeace.org/inscrdata.html, data on CPIA derived from the World Bank Development Indicators, at data.worldbank.org/data-catalog/CPIA.

  121. Nathaniel Beck and Jonathan Katz, “What to Do (and Not To Do) With Time-Series Cross-Section Data,” American Political Science Review 89 (1995): 634–47; Nathaniel Beck and Jonathan Katz, “Nuisance vs. Substance: Specifying and Estimating Time-Series-Cross-Section Models,” Political Analysis 6 (1996): 1–36.

  122. Ida Kristensen and Gregory Wawro, “Lagging the Dog? The Robustness of Panel Corrected Standard Errors in the Presence of Serial Correlation and Observation Specific Effects,” presented at the Annual Meeting of the Society for Political Methodology, University of Minnesota, 2003, at www.polmeth.wustl.edu/media/Paper/krist03.pdf.

  123. Christopher Achen, “Why Lagged Dependent Variables Can Suppress the Explanatory Power of Other Independent Variables,” presented at the Annual Meeting of the Political Methodology Section of the American Political Science Association, Los Angeles 2001, at www.forecastingsolutions.com/downloads%5CLagDepv.pdf.

  124. George Box, Gwilym Jenkins, and Gregory Reinsel, Time Series Analysis: Forecasting and Control (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2011).

  125. Kristensen and Wawro, “Lagging the Dog?” (see note 122 above).

  126. These alternative models were produced with the commands “xtreg, robust” and “xtreg, re” on STATA version 12.0. These results are not provided because of space constraints.

  127. Michael Tomz, Jason Wittenberg, and Gary King, “CLARIFY: Software for Interpreting and Presenting Statistical Results,” Journal of Statistical Software 8 (2003): 1–30.

  128. Bertocchi and Guerzoni, “Growth, History, or Institutions?” (see note 2 above).

  129. Patrick, “Growth, History, or Institutions?” (see note 53 above).

  130. Ziltener and Künzler, “Impacts,” 291 (see note 53 above).

  131. Bernhard, Reenock, and Nordstrom, “The Legacy” (see note 47 above).

  132. Sambit Bhattacharyya, “Root Causes of African Underdevelopment,” Journal of African Economies 18 (2009): 745–80.

  133. Pierre Englebert, “Pre-Colonial Institutions, Post-Colonial States, and Economic Development in Tropical Africa,” Political Research Quarterly 53 (2000): 7–36, at 7.

  134. Niall Ferguson, Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World (London: Penguin Press, 2012).

  135. Jonathan Krieckhaus, Dictating Development (see note 45 above).

  136. Matthew Lange and Dietrich Rueschemeyer, eds., States and Development: Historical Antecedents of Stagnation and Advance (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005).

  137. Pierre Englebert, “Solving the Mystery of the AFRICA Dummy,” World Development 28 (2000): 1821–35; Englebert, “Pre-Colonial” (see note 133 above).

  138. Englebert, “Solving,” 1827–28 (see previous note).

  139. Ibid., 1823.

  140. Bocksette, Chanda, and Putterman, “States and Markets” (see note 20 above).

  141. Lisa Chauvet and Paul Collier, “What are the Preconditions for Turnarounds in Failing States?” in Dealing with Failed States: Crossing Analytical Boundaries, ed. Harvey Starr (New York: Routledge Press, 2009), 52–68.

  142. David Carment, Yiagadeesen Samy, and Stewart Prest, “State Fragility and Implications for Aid Allocation: An Empirical Analysis,” in Dealing with Failed States, 69–93 (see previous note).

  143. Daniel Lambach and Dragan Gamberger, “Temporal Analysis of Political Instability through Descriptive Subgroup Discovery,” in Dealing with Failed States, 94–107 (see note 141 above).

  144. See Neil Englehart and Marc Simon, “Failing States” (see note 9 above).

  145. Iqbal and Starr, “Bad Neighbors” (see note 28 above); Iqbal and Starr, “State Failure” (see note 7 above).

  146. Bertocchi and Canova, “Did Colonization Matter” (see note 4 above); Bertocchi and Guerzoni, “Growth, History, or Institutions?” (see note 2 above); Nunn, “The Long-Term” (see note 25 above).

  147. Tiffiany Howard, Failed States and the Origins of Violence: A Comparative Analysis of State Failure as a Root Cause of Terrorism and Political Violence (New York: Routledge, 2016).

  148. Ezrow and Frantz, Failed States, 56–57 (see note 6 above).

  149. Ibid, 59–65.

  150. Lange, Lineages (see note 58 above).

  151. Ghani and Lockhart, Fixing Failed States (see note 51 above).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Rollin F. Tusalem.

Additional information

An earlier version of this paper was presented at the annual meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association Meeting, Chicago, Illinois, April 3, 2014. I would like to thank participants in the State Capacity/Nation-Building panel for their constructive comments and suggestions on a previous draft of this paper. I also would like to acknowledge Adnan Naseemullah, Veena S. Kulkarni, Sener Akturk, and the anonymous reviewers and editor-in-chief of Polity for their constructive advice, comments, and suggestions.

Appendices

Appendix 1: Summary Statistics and Sources of Data

Variable name

Observations

Mean

Standard deviation

Min

Max

Source of data

State Failure Index (1995–2012)

2,115

12.051

5.792

0

25

Marshall and Cole, State Fragility Index 2012 (see note 103 above)

Country and Policy Institutional Assessment Score (CPIA score; 2005–2012)

518

3.295

0.484

1.500

4.333

World Bank Development indicators (see note 117 above)

British colonial dummy

2,115

0.375

0.484

0

1

Hensel, ICOW colonial history data (see note 108 above)

French colonial dummy

2,115

0.259

0.438

0

1

Hensel, ICOW colonial history data (see note 108 above)

Portuguese colonial dummy

2,115

0.038

0.192

0

1

Hensel, ICOW colonial history data (see note 108 above)

Spanish colonial dummy

2,115

0.167

0.373

0

1

Hensel, ICOW colonial history data (see note 108 above)

Colonial domination (in years)

2,115

165.56

122.424

0

513

Ziltener and Künzler, “Impacts of colonialism” (see note 53 above)

British colonial domination (interactive term)

2,115

55.429

96.117

0

452

Hensel, ICOW colonial history data (see note 108 above); Ziltener and Künzler, “Impacts of colonialism” (see note 53 above)

French colonial domination (interactive term)

2,115

29.972

74.258

0

513

Hensel, ICOW colonial history data (see note 107 above); Ziltener and Künzler, “Impacts of colonialism” (see note 53 above)

Spanish colonial domination (interactive term)

2,115

50.957

116.052

0

416

Hensel, ICOW colonial history data (see note 107 above); Ziltener and Künzler, “Impacts of colonialism” (see note 53 above)

Portuguese colonial domination (interactive term)

2,115

14.237

72.301

0

470

Hensel, ICOW colonial history data (see note 107 above); Ziltener and Künzler, “Impacts of colonialism” (see note 53 above)

Polity IV score

2,115

1.452

6.336

−10

10

Polity IV democracy scores; at http://www.systemicpeace.org/polity/polity4.htm

Polity score squared

2,115

42.239

30.958

0

100

Polity IV democracy measures; at http://www.systemicpeace.org/polity/polity4.htm

Ethnic fractionalization

2,115

0.514

0.252

0

0.930

Alberto Alesina et al. “Fractionalization,” Journal of Economic Growth 8 (2003): 155–194

Muslim population as % of population

2,115

33.935

39.739

0

99.8

La Porta et al., “The quality of government” (see note 115 above)

Natural log of GDP per capita

2,115

7.254

1.363

4.171

11.435

World Bank Development indicators (see note 117 above)

Civil war since 1946

2,115

0.442

0.496

0

1

Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO); data on armed conflict; at http://www.prio.no/Data/Armed-Conflict/Onset-and-Duration-of-Intrastate-Conflict/

Population (natural log)

2,115

16.050

1.517

12.791

20.935

World Bank Development indicators (see note 117 above)

Exports as % of GDP (trade openness)

2,115

36.892

27.814

0

523.463

World Bank Development indicators (see note 117 above)

State antiquity measure (stateness)

1,780

0.605

0.184

0.125

0.994

Bocksette, Chanda and Putterman, “States and markets” (see note 20 above)

Latitude

2,115

0.205

0.129

0.011

0.533

La Porta et al., “The quality of government” (see note 115 above)

State failures in the international system (number)

2,115

2.138

1.875

0

8

Polity IV democracy scores, at http://www.systemicpeace.org/polity/polity4.htm

Latin America/Caribbean dummy

2,115

0.200

0.400

0

1

Author’s coding

Asia dummy

2,115

0.264

0.440

0

1

Author’s coding

Africa dummy

2,115

0.384

0.486

0

1

Author’s coding

Middle East and North Africa dummy

2,115

0.150

0.357

0

1

Author’s coding

Appendix 2: List of Countries Used in the Analysis and Their State Fragility/Failure Scores

Country name

State Failure Index (mean value, 1995–2012)

CPIA score (mean value 2005–2012)

Dominant colonial power

Years of colonial domination

Afghanistan

23

2.49

United Kingdom

39

Algeria

17

*

France

132

Angola

21

2.79

Portugal

402

Argentina

2

*

Spain

236

Armenia

7

4.07

Soviet Union

68

Azerbaijan

15

3.52

Soviet Union

71

Bahrain

5

*

United Kingdom

111

Benin

15

*

France

82

Burkina Faso

16

2.44

France

65

Bhutan

12

3.19

United Kingdom

83

Bangladesh

15

3.33

United Kingdom

190

Bolivia

11

3.68

Spain

301

Botswana

5

*

United Kingdom

81

Brazil

6

*

Portugal

288

Burundi

21

3.02

Belgium

65

Cambodia

14

2.31

France

92

Cameroon

18

3.19

France

115

Cape Verde

17

2.89

Portugal

513

Central African Republic

17

2.62

France

70

Chad

22

2.76

France

60

Chile

3

*

Spain

285

Colombia

13

*

Spain

269

Comoros

15

2.71

France

89

Congo-Brazzaville (Republic of Congo)

16

2.69

France

80

Costa Rica

1

*

Spain

299

Cuba

7

*

Spain

206

Cyprus

3

*

United Kingdom

82

Democratic Republic of Congo

23

2.56

Belgium

81

Djibouti

15

2.19

France

115

Dominican Republic

6

*

Spain

325

East Timor

14

2.68

Portugal

300

Ecuador

11

*

Spain

296

Egypt

13

*

United Kingdom

80

El Salvador

8

*

Spain

284

Equatorial Guinea

13

3.24

Spain

461

Eritrea

15

1.62

Italy

46

Ethiopia

20

3.17

Italy

46

Fiji

8

*

United Kingdom

96

Gabon

11

*

France

108

Gambia

13

3.45

United Kingdom

149

Ghana

13

4.02

United Kingdom

201

Guinea-Bissau

17

2.78

Portugal

358

Guatemala

13

*

Spain

302

Guinea

19

3.24

France

93

Guyana

10

3.46

United Kingdom

152

Haiti

16

2.12

France

179

Honduras

10

3.89

Spain

171

India

13

3.67

United Kingdom

190

Indonesia

12

3.63

Netherlands

343

Iran

15

*

United Kingdom

93

Iraq

20

*

United Kingdom

44

Ivory Coast

16

3.26

France

121

Jamaica

3

3.89

United Kingdom

307

Jordan

7

*

United Kingdom

38

Kenya

13

4.00

United Kingdom

75

Kuwait

4

*

United Kingdom

62

Kyrgyzstan

12

3.88

Soviet Union

72

Kazakhstan

10

*

Soviet Union

74

Korea, South

1

*

Japan

69

Laos

15

2.81

France

62

Liberia

21

2.83

United States/Settler Colony

155

Lebanon

10

*

France

81

Lesotho

12

3.28

United Kingdom

121

Libya

10

*

Italy

40

Madagascar

13

3.34

France

104

Malawi

15

3.41

United Kingdom

79

Malaysia

6

*

United Kingdom

452

Mali

16

3.25

France

80

Mauritania

17

3.32

France

102

Mauritius

1

*

United Kingdom

201

Mexico

6

*

Spain

302

Mongolia

9

3.50

None

0

Morocco

8

*

France

53

Mozambique

17

2.24

Portugal

470

Myanmar

21

*

United Kingdom

122

Namibia

7

*

Germany/South Africa

106

Nepal

15

3.23

United Kingdom

131

Nicaragua

12

3.72

Spain

297

Nigeria

20

3.28

United Kingdom

109

Niger

18

3.04

France

63

Oman

5

*

United Kingdom

264

Pakistan

16

3.47

United Kingdom

104

Panama

7

*

Spain

300

Papua New Guinea

13

3.45

United Kingdom

91

Paraguay

9

*

Spain

274

Peru

11

*

Spain

289

Philippines

13

*

Spain

381

Qatar

5

*

United Kingdom

55

Rwanda

20

2.67

Germany/Belgium

62

Saudi Arabia

10

*

United Kingdom

12

Senegal

12

2.88

France

90

Sierra Leone

22

3.10

United Kingdom

174

Singapore

2

*

United Kingdom

123

Solomon Islands

11

3.25

United Kingdom

93

Somalia

23

*

United Kingdom

19

South Africa

10

*

United Kingdom

342

Sri Lanka

14

3.83

United Kingdom

351

Sudan

24

3.12

United Kingdom

74

Suriname

8

*

Netherlands

287

Swaziland

9

*

United Kingdom

88

Syria

17

*

France

28

Tajikistan

14

3.30

Russia/Soviet Union

106

Taiwan (R.O.C.)

1

*

Japan

87

Tanzania

13

3.66

United Kingdom

42

Thailand

7

*

None

0

Turkmenistan

11

*

Russia/Soviet Union

92

Togo

16

3.15

France

76

Trinidad and Tobago

4

*

United Kingdom

165

Tunisia

8

*

France

87

Turkey

10

*

None

0

Uganda

18

3.87

United Kingdom

72

United Arab Emirates

4

*

United Kingdom

121

Uruguay

1

*

Spain

314

Uzbekistan

13

2.72

Soviet Union

67

Venezuela

9

*

Spain

289

Vietnam

9

3.32

France

97

Yemen

16

3.29

United Kingdom

26

Zambia

17

3.57

United Kingdom

75

Zimbabwe

17

2.00

United Kingdom

225

  1. * No CPIA data available.
  2. Sources: For the State Failure Index, see Marshall and Cole, State Fragility/Failure Index (see note 103 above); for the CPIA score, see “World Bank Development indicators, 2012” (see note 117 above).

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Tusalem, R.F. The Colonial Foundations of State Fragility and Failure. Polity 48, 445–495 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41279-016-0006-4

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