Home  About us  Contact
 

Weak States (weak + states)

Distribution by Scientific Domains
Humanities and Social Sciences60%
Business, Economics, Finance and Accounting40%

Selected Abstracts

Political Competition in Weak States

ECONOMICS & POLITICS, Issue 2 2001
Eliana La Ferrara
In the developing areas, politics is often undemocratic, states lack a monopoly over violence, and politicians play upon cultural identities. To analyze politics in such settings, we develop a model in which politicians compete to build a revenue yielding constituency. Citizens occupy fixed locations and politicians seek to maximize rents. To secure revenues, politicians must incur the costs of providing local public goods and mobilizing security services. Citizens must participate, i.e. pay taxes; but can choose which leader to support. The model enables us to explore the impact of cultural identities and varying notions of military power. [source]

State Capacity, Conflict, and Development

ECONOMETRICA, Issue 1 2010
Timothy Besley
The absence of state capacities to raise revenue and to support markets is a key factor in explaining the persistence of weak states. This paper reports on an ongoing project to investigate the incentive to invest in such capacities. The paper sets out a simple analytical structure in which state capacities are modeled as forward looking investments by government. The approach highlights some determinants of state building including the risk of external or internal conflict, the degree of political instability, and dependence on natural resources. Throughout, we link these state capacity investments to patterns of development and growth. [source]

Ending Wars and Building Peace: International Responses to War-Torn Societies1

INTERNATIONAL STUDIES PERSPECTIVES, Issue 1 2008
Charles T. Call
Scholars and practitioners of international relations have devoted increasing attention to how cease-fires, once achieved, may be translated into sustained peace. In recent years, the United Nations, the World Bank, and the United States and other governments have revamped their institutional architecture for addressing post-conflict reconstruction and peacebuilding. The creation in 2006 of a UN Peacebuilding Commission exemplifies these changes. The relationship between weak states and the durability of peace has acquired new emphasis in IR research. This article analyzes recent conceptual developments in post-conflict peacebuilding, relating them to new thinking about fragile states. It then analyzes the international architecture for addressing post-conflict peacebuilding, identifying gaps, and analyzing likely policy challenges in the near future. We argue that despite important analytic insights and institutional changes, serious challenges persist in efforts to prevent wars from recurring. [source]

Transition in Post-Communist States: Triple or Quadruple?

POLITICS, Issue 3 2001
Taras Kuzio
When the study of transitions moved from Latin America and southern Europe scholars initially assumed that transition in these two regions would be regime-based ,double transitions' of democratisation and marketisation. Gradually, it was accepted by scholars that many post-communist states inherited weak states and institutions, thereby adding a third factor to the transition process of stateness. This ,triple transition' has been largely accepted as sufficient to understand post-communist transitions and, in some cases, includes nationality questions. This article builds on the ,triple transition' by separating the national and stateness questions within its third aspect and argues that although both processes are interlinked they should be nevertheless separated into separate components (democratisation and marketisation are treated separately but are also closely related phenomena). This article argues two points. First, stateness and the nationality question were until recently ignored by scholars because these were not factors in earlier transitions. Secondly, they were ignored because the relationship of nationhood to the civic state is still under-theorised. [source]

Regulation of space in the contemporary postcolonial Pacific city: Port Moresby and Suva

ASIA PACIFIC VIEWPOINT, Issue 3 2003
John Connell
Abstract:,National development problems in the weak states of Papua New Guinea and Fiji have resulted in external intervention. However neo-liberal development strategies have not resolved development problems and may have further weakened state structures. In both capital cities rural-urban migration, rising urban unemployment, and the expansion of squatter settlements and the informal sector have all continued in recent years. The numbers of beggars, street kids and prostitutes have increased, as has domestic violence and crime. Governments have opposed all these trends, by regulation and intolerance, violence, routine repression and eviction, rather than by pro-poor policies. Settlers, prostitutes, beggars, street kids and market vendors have been evicted and moved on, on the ideological premise that that their true place is in rural areas, and that their urban presence challenges and threatens notions of urban order. Moral regulation, social exclusion and moral panic have divided ,good citizens' from marginal and possibly criminal others, intensifying social divisions within the cities. Sustainable urban development has proved difficult to achieve. [source]