Reversing Polarities: Anarchical (Failed) States versus International Progress

Marta Fernandez Moreno

doi:10.1590/1981-38212015000300020

Marta Fernandez Moreno

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1590/1981-38212015000300020

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Abstract

The article explores how the literature on 'failed states' (re)produces the modern state as a regulatory ideal, obscuring its contingent character and its violent foundation. So, discursive practices, based on an Eurocentric account, construct the 'failed state' as deviant. The resultant hierarchy of states, in turn, creates favorable conditions for interventionist practices, whose agents are depicted as members of a 'progressive' and 'benevolent' 'international community'. As state failure is interpreted as exclusively domestic process, a well-demarcated boundary between the domestic level of 'anarchy' and the international realm of 'order' and 'progress' results. This article shows that the traditional image of an anarchical system versus an ordered and progressive state is turned on its head when viewed from the perspective of 'failed states'. In the latter, domestic anarchy is contrary to a modernizing international realm. By labelling the 'other' as 'traditional', 'failed', and 'backward' in distinction to a 'modern', 'successful' and 'progressive' international, the dominant discourse conditions us to conceive of these realms as homogeneous in themselves and radically different from each other, rather than as liminal areas with numerous ambiguities and overlaps.

Highlights

The article explores how the literature on 'failed states'produces the modern state as a regulatory ideal, obscuring its contingent character and its violent foundation
This article analyses the category of 'failed states' as a discursive practice rather than as an explanation of some objective reality. It understands that the discourse on 'failed states' is not a description of an innocent world 'out there', since it participates in the production of this world
To the extent that the failure of these states is linked to endogenous factors, they are seen as incapable of self-government; this creates the conditions for a 'benevolent' intervention by the restorative forces of the 'international community'

Summary

Introduction

The article explores how the literature on 'failed states' (re)produces the modern state as a regulatory ideal, obscuring its contingent character and its violent foundation. 'successful states' are able to guarantee security through the monopoly on the legitimate use of force, to provide public goods to their population, to respect democratic principles, to observe human rights, to ensure the efficient functioning of their administrative machine, to promote 'good governance', but they are states that construct themselves as temporally advanced in relation to their 'failed' and 'backward' counterparts.

Results

Conclusion