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Joseph Young on Ungoverned Spaces
+ Brandon Fuller
The term failed state is a failed concept.
That’s Joseph Young blogging at Political Violence @ a Glance. He offers a useful corrective for the common notion of a failed state, that of “ungoverned spaces.” Most countries fall somewhere on the continuum between the extremes of complete success and total failure with varying degrees of less governed space within them. The notion of a failed state:
suggests that the modern state is a binary outcome—there is or is not one. States in the international system are more fluid. The ability of the state to be a state—provide security, services, rule of law, and other important public goods can vary even within a single country…We all know that state power varies across time, but this power also varies across space.
Who or what is a failed state? Afghanistan? Not exactly. Iraq. Same answer. Somalia? Getting warmer. Is the US a failed state? Certainly not. But imagine the worst, most vile neighborhood you have been to, then you have a sense for how even a stronger state like the US has some less governed spaces…The danger, of course, with these spaces is that someone else often decides to govern. In the favelas, or shantytowns, in Brazil this alternative may be a drug cartel. In Somalia, it is Al Shabab, an Islamist insurgency.
These less governed spaces are most dangerous for their residents but also for countries that have enemies that might hide in them. In sum, these less governed spaces are a problem of domestic and international security.