From Hybridity to Standardization: Rethinking State-Making in Contexts of Fragility

Abstract

Having been top of the agenda for the past two decades, debates on state fragility have recently witnessed the emergence of pluralist concepts. While the concept of ‘hybrid political orders’ has invigorated our thinking about fragile states, it yields to the fallacy that pluralism constitutes the birth certificate of statehood. This article introduces an alternative concept to better grasp state trajectories, proposing an understanding of state developments in terms of institutional and identity standardization. Rooted in existing accounts of state-making, the analytical prism of ‘rule standardization’ is original in that it conceptually bridges the gap between statebuilding and nation-building as well as between state-making and state-breaking. Substantiating the theoretical discussion with three case studies from the Somali territories, the paper fundamentally proposes that what is required to sustain states should not be confused with what is required to initiate them.