State Fragility and Resilience in sub-Saharan Africa
This book focuses on the indicators of fragility and the resilience of state-led interventions to address them in sub-Saharan Africa. It analyzes the figure of fragile states as the unit of analysis and situates the study of fragility, governance and political adaptation within contemporary global and local political, economic and socio-cultural contexts.
The chapters offer an indispensable, econometrically informed guide to better understanding issues that have an impact on fragility in governance and nation-building and affect policy-making and program design targeting institutions in various circumstances. These issues, as they relate to the indicators of fragility, are the contexts and correlates of armed conflicts on statehood and state fragility, the poverty-trap, pandemics and household food insecurity, and child labor. Case studies from across 46 sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries are assessed to offer clear, broad and multidisciplinary views of what the future holds for them and the international donor communities at large. Regarding state-led interventions, the authors utilize insightful statistical methods and epistemologies to explain the correlates of behavioral language frames and conflict de-escalation on battle-related deaths across the conflict zones within the sub-region, the regional and country-level interventions to end child labor, the institutional frameworks and interventions in the advancement of food security and health.
This book will be of interest to scholars of economics, development, politics in developing countries, Area and African Studies, peace, conflict and security studies.
John Idriss Lahai is a Research Fellow at the University of New England, Australia.
Isaac Koomson is a PhD candidate at the UNE Business School at the University of New England, Australia.
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State Fragility and Resilience in sub-Saharan Africa
Indicators and Interventions
John Idriss Lahai and Isaac Koomson
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State Fragility and Resilience in sub-Saharan Africa
Indicators and Interventions
John Idriss Lahai and Isaac Koomson
First published 2020
by Routledge
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2020 John Idriss Lahai and Isaac Koomson
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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Lahai, John Idriss, author. | Koomson, Isaac, author.
Title: State fragility and resilience in sub-Saharan Africa : indicators and interventions / John Idriss Lahai and Isaac Koomson.
Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2020. | Series: Routledge contemporary Africa | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Identifiers: LCCN 2019044841 | ISBN 9780367410797 (hardback) | ISBN 9780367853846 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Political stabilityAfrica, Sub-Saharan. | Nation-buildingAfrica, Sub-Saharan. | Conflict managementAfrica, Sub-Saharan. | Child laborAfrica, Sub-Saharan. | Food securityAfrica, Sub-Saharan. | Africa, Sub-SaharanSocial conditions21st century.
Classification: LCC JQ1875 .L35 2020 | DDC 320.967dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019044841
ISBN: 978-0-367-41079-7 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-367-85384-6 (ebk)
Typeset in Times New Roman
by Wearset Ltd, Boldon, Tyne and Wear
Contents
National harmonies, the needs of an internationalized economy, group interests, classes and legal structures did not prevent conflict coming, did not ameliorate it when it did come, did not fight it and did not win it. It was governments [used interchangeably with the state] that fought it and did win it, by intricate calculations as to strategy and tactics, by mobilizing the political, material and psychological resources of nations, through appeal to the national interest (Hans J. Morgenthau, in Politics Among Nations (published in 1948) quoted in Navari 1991, 4). In this book we argue that the postcolonial state in sub-Saharan Africa cannot be trivialized, given its role in the making of the indicators of fragility: such as conflict, political instability, poverty, pandemics, corruption, food insecurity, gender inequality and child labor. Despiteor because ofthis role, however, the postcolonial state should be seen as a resilient actor; one with a central role in managing economic, social and political fragility. Building on empirical discussions and statistical models of fragility and the role of the state, we propose two theoretical frameworks to understand, first (in ), using the fragility-as-resilience discourse as an affective analytical tool, the character of state resilience and interventions, with particular emphasis on the state-centric approaches.
Why a state-centric approach? We believe this framework enables us to describe, predict and understand the meaning of the state, and to challenge the existing knowledge about it within the limits of relevant epistemological and practical assumptions. Having said that, we recognizeand, in fact, problematizethe existential crisis the concept of state (including its place and power) is currently undergoing. We also note that the increase in political interventions in the region is not driven solely by altruistic motives. The routinization of governmental interventions to end fragility is also driven by a power-seeking desire not just to control the resilience spaces at all levels of the state, but also to transform them into platforms for experimentation either with externally framed neoliberal peace and development policies or with indigenous policies that would guarantee these governments political survivalat all costs, and by whatever means possible.
