State Collapse and its Implications for Peace-Building
and Reconstruction
Alexandros Yannis
ABSTRACT
At the beginning of the twenty-first century, terms such as state collapse and
failed states are becoming familiar, regularly used in international politics
to describe a new and frightening challenge to international security. The
dramatic events of September 11 have pushed the issue of collapsed states
further into the limelight. This article has two aims. Firstly, it explains the
contextual factors that gave rise to the phenomenon of state collapse. In the
early post-Cold War period, state collapse was usually viewed as a regional
phenomenon, and concerns were mainly limited to humanitarian consequences
for the local population and destabilizing effects on neighbouring countries.
Now, state collapse is seen in a more global context, and concerns are directed
at the emergence of groups of non-state actors who are hostile to the fundamental values and interests of the international society such as peace, stability,
rule of law, freedom and democracy. Secondly, the article offers some observations about the normative implications of the phenomenon of state collapse
for peace-building and reconstruction.
INTRODUCTION
‘. . . whenever the influence of public authority declines, little
states grow up within the state, little societies within society’.
Vilfredo Pareto (1935)
‘Rules require authority, whether in the form of public
government or private or community governance’.
Robert Keohane and Joseph Nye (1998)
At the time of writing, terms such as state collapse, failed states, state disintegration, breakdown of law and order, anarchy and chaos are being
regularly employed in the international relations vernacular to describe a
new and worrying situation which seems to challenge, if not threaten, international security. These terms refer to the drastic deterioration of the
political, social, and economic conditions of life in certain parts of the globe
Development and Change 33(5): 817–835 (2002). # Institute of Social Studies 2002. Published
by Blackwell Publishers, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK and 350 Main St., Malden,
MA 02148. USA
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Alexandros Yannis
and to their implications for the local populations, for regional stability, and
for international security.
As with any issue in international relations, understanding the phenomenon
of state collapse requires an examination of the contextual circumstances
from which it emerged. In the early post-Cold War period, state collapse
usually implied an extreme disruption of the political order of a country due
to protracted domestic conflicts and disintegration of public authorities, and
the main issues raised were about its destabilizing impact on neighbouring
countries and the humanitarian consequences for the local population. Its
predominant features were thus regional and humanitarian; interest in
addressing these issues was an integral part of the climate that dominated
the early post-Cold War period and, particularly, the tendency of the
western-led international community to provide assertive responses to such
challenges. The dramatic events of September 11 have elevated the relevance
of collapsed states into a central question for international security. State
collapse is now increasingly identified with the emergence within a disintegrated state of non-state actors who are hostile to the fundamental
values and interests of the international society such as peace, stability, rule
of law, freedom and democracy. These actors — including terrorist groups,
drugs cartels, money launderers and weapons dealers — are challenging the
international status quo by exploiting the territorial vacuum of power and
the technological and information opportunities of globalization.
This contribution first explains in greater detail the contextual factors that
gave rise to the phenomenon of state collapse in the post-Cold War period.
Second, in the light of this analysis, it provides some observations about the
normative implications for peace-building and reconstruction which can
address the underlying issues of the phenomenon of state collapse.1
1. Language plays an important role in the contemporary discourse on state collapse. The
post-Cold War terms ‘failed states’ and ‘state collapse’ are currently most commonly used
to describe an implosion of government. While both terms have been used interchangeably, ‘failed state’ was originally endorsed by authoritative figures of international politics
such as the previous UN Secretary General, Boutros Boutros-Ghali and the former US
Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright. After September 11, ‘failed state’ also seems to
have become the dominant term. However, the term can mislead if it is understood to
imply a value judgement that there are specific standards of social, political and economic
performance and success to which all states should aspire, rather than minimum standards
of governance that reflect a universal consensus about the minimum requirements of
effective and responsible government. Moreover, the picture portrayed when ‘failed state’
is used is one of societal failure. This automatically attributes the entire political
responsibility and moral liability for state collapse to local communities — generating a
moral justification for outside intervention to assist ‘those who have failed’. For these
reasons, this article uses the the more descriptive and dispassionate term ‘state collapse’, as
well as ‘state disintegration’, and ‘implosion’ or ‘dissolution of government’.
Implications for Peace-Building and Reconstruction
819
THE PHENOMENON OF STATE COLLAPSE IN POST-COLD WAR
INTERNATIONAL POLITICS
In the early days of the post-Cold War period the majority of observers
approached the phenomenon of state collapse mainly from an African/Third
World perspective (Clapham, 1996; Herbst, 1996–7; Mazrui, 1995; Villalon
and Huxtable, 1998; wa Mutua, 1995; Zartman, 1995; Zolberg, 1992). This is
partly because a large number of disintegrating states could be found in these
parts of the world, and partly because the majority of the poorest and weakest
states in the world could be found in Africa. In the words of Abdulqawi
Yusuf: ‘Thirty-four years after 1960, the symbolic year of ‘‘Africa’s independence’’ many African countries continue to experience serious difficulty
in the process of consolidation of their statehood . . . Some African nations
have in the past few years reduced themselves to a state of ‘‘suspended
statehood’’ in which there may still be recognised frontiers, but everything
inside has become anarchy and lawlessness’ (Yusuf, 1995: 3). Regional
rather than global implications were the major concerns in this period. As
Terence Lyons and Ahmed Samatar argued: ‘political disintegration generates
instability and threatens neighbouring states through refugee flows, the
stimulation of illegal trade in weapons and other contraband, and because
the communities imperilled by state collapse often cross borders and can
appeal to neighbouring groups for involvement’ (Lyons and Samatar, 1995: 3).
Some observers, however, began pointing to the global implications of
state collapse. Gerald Helman and Steven Ratner, for example, introduced
state disintegration as a global phenomenon: ‘from Haiti in the Western
Hemisphere to the remnants of Yugoslavia in Europe, from Somalia, Sudan
and Liberia in Africa to Cambodia in Southeast Asia, a disturbing new
phenomenon is emerging: the failed nation-state, utterly incapable of sustaining itself as a member of the international community’ (Helman and Ratner,
1992–3: 3). Robert Kaplan went a step further. He attributed to the phenomenon of state collapse dimensions of a disease of biblical proportions,
starting in Africa and other Third World countries, spreading and threatening to infect the entire world. Under the alarming title ‘The Coming
Anarchy: How scarcity, crime, overpopulation, tribalism, and disease are
rapidly destroying the social fabric of our planet’, Robert Kaplan argued
that ‘crime and lawlessness of West Africa is a model of what future life
could become everywhere as demographic, environmental, health and social
problems increase’ (Kaplan, 1994: 44). He concluded that state collapse
is manifested by ‘disease, overpopulation, unprovoked crime, scarcity of
resources, refugee migrations, the increasing erosion of nation-states and
international borders, and the empowerment of private armies, security
firms, and international drug cartels’ (ibid.: 46). For these observers
September 11 vindicated their doomsday theories.
The conceptual contours of the phenomenon of state collapse can only be
determined in the context of the conditions that generated international
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interest in disintegrating states and decomposing societies in the post-Cold
War period. More specifically, state collapse should be understood as an aspect
of the post-Cold War international environment in which globalization and the
decline of state authority have become the quintessential questions of our time,
issues of domestic conflicts and their ramifications have emerged as major
challenges for regional security, and human rights and humanitarian concerns
have been assigned higher values in international politics. September 11 added
a new parameter: state collapse and its implications represent the sinister
side of globalization and pose new threats to international security.
Globalization and the Decline of State Authority
The debate about the future of the state, now so central, actually encompasses
two different sets of debates and issues. The first debate is between, on one
side, the ‘end of history’ theories, which claim that liberal democracy will
soon be the form of government around the world; and on the other side,
the ‘cultural relativism’ or ‘clash of civilization’ theories, which assert the
utopianism of liberal universalism and the inevitability of the survival of
different patterns of government and the persistence of their mutual hostility
(Fukuyama, 1996; Huntington, 1996).
Second, and perhaps more prominent, is the debate between theories of
state decline and theories that point to the resilience of the state as the
primary model of political organization. The theory of the decline of the
state is a complex proposition based on a variety of political, economic,
social, technological and ideological developments around the globe. It
predicts that globalization (the ascendancy of transnational activity at both
supranational and sub-state level and the increasing political and economic
interdependence among states) will eventually marginalize the state. The
theory of the resilience of the state points to global problems such as
increasing economic and social disparities, persistent international financial
instability, and global environmental and demographic pressures. State
resilience theorists argue that the state is the only force that can provide the
structures of authority necessary to cope with the incessant claims of
competing societal groups and to ensure social justice and sustainable
development essential to public order and stability. For Eric Hobsbawm, for
example, a major lesson of the twentieth century is that ‘the state, or some
other form of public authority representing the public interest, was more
indispensable than ever if the social and environmental iniquities of the
market economy were to be countered, or even — as the reform of
capitalism in the 1940s had shown — if the economic system was to operate
satisfactorily’ (Hobsbawm, 1994: 577). It appears that the central issue
today, in terms of the future of the state, is to identify the mechanisms
needed to sustain a dynamic equilibrium between the forces of economic
growth and informal redistribution of wealth, and the forces of social justice
Implications for Peace-Building and Reconstruction
821
and formal social distribution in an intensely internationalized world, both
in terms of opportunities and risks.
The post-Cold War upsurge in the phenomenon of state collapse — the
disintegration of governmental authority and the extreme disruption of law
and order in some parts of the world — is clearly associated with the debate
about the future of the state. State collapse is often contemplated as the
ultimate form of state decline: ‘the most dramatic examples of the decline in
state authority can be found in countries where government and civil order
have virtually disappeared’ (Schachter, 1997: 8). Michael Reisman adds:
‘more than any other phenomenon, the disintegrating state has prompted
doubts about the future of the state’ (Reisman, 1997: 417).
State disintegration is also associated with the theories of state decline
because it is largely viewed as emanating from the destabilization of the
world’s domestic political systems in the aftermath of the Cold War and,
especially, from the increasing marginalization of the state as a force capable
of handling the impact of globalization and harnessing the growing strength
of non-state and sub-state actors. While the forces of international capitalism
and globalization are considered to be behind the financial instability and
marginalization of certain parts of the world, and thus undermining the
authority of the state from outside, the various forms of ‘uncivil society’,
several kinds of non-state and sub-state actors, are the major and most
visible forces that erode state authority not only from outside but also from
within. Richard Shultz put it as follows:
The end of the Cold War has been marked by an increase in the visibility of several nonstate
actors. They include extreme ethnonationalist movements, religious radicals, local militias,
international criminal organisations and terrorists, among others . . . Some of these nonstate
actors effectively defy and openly challenge government sovereignty in various regions of the
world . . . These developments result in the disintegration of state structures and authority,
growing instability, and the inability of states to govern. (Shultz, 1995: 76)
From this perspective, the phenomenon of state collapse is another aspect
of the cataclysmic impact on states and the international system of the
global political, social and economic changes that are underway. It signifies
the inability of states to absorb those changes peacefully, and particularly
highlights the dynamic advent of forces inimical to the concept of public
order as defined by the twentieth century social state (Hobsbawm, 1997:
263–5). While such developments may lie at the root of the phenomenon of
state collapse, the emergence of state disintegration as a distinct issue in postCold War international politics is linked with separate specific developments.
Hobbesian Anarchy and International Security in Post-Cold War
International Politics
While state collapse may rightly be seen as the ultimate form of the decline
of state authority, it nonetheless constitutes a distinct aspect of state decline.
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State collapse is not the offspring of any state theory that promotes the total
withering away of the state, but rather the pathological by-product of a
combination of local and/or global political, social and economic forces and
developments. In other words, disintegration of public authority is the
realization of neither the Anarchic Utopia of Michael Bakunin nor the Neoliberal ‘minimal state’ of Robert Nozick.2
None of the influential contemporary state theories questions the role of
the state as the ultimate guardian of public order. Even a ‘minimalist’ state is
expected to possess the institutional and organizational capacity to safeguard the physical security of its citizens which, together with the natural
environment, form the material foundations of human societies. In fact,
with the notable exception of nineteenth century anarchism, the internal
aspect of Hobbes’ Leviathan — the personification of the implied contract
between citizens and the sovereign in whom citizens, in order to safeguard
their security, have vested absolute power to maintain order within the state
— has served throughout the history of the modern state as the lowest
common denominator of all state theories (Hobbes, 1957: Ch. XVII).
Accordingly, the minimum requirement of government has traditionally
meant the provision of the structures of authority that can ensure, through
the monopoly of legal and coercive means, that the state honours the ‘social
contract’ to provide security for its citizens. In short, order requires some
form of public authority.
In consequence, state collapse is currently understood in international
relations primarily as the descent of a state into Hobbesian anarchy. It
signifies the violent collapse of government and the implosion of the domestic
structures of authority that can ensure minimum law and order and the
physical security of the local population. The prevailing imagery of state
collapse in the post-Cold War period is thus associated with the metamorphosis of a society into a battlefield where life is, in Hobbesian terms,
‘nasty, brutish and short’. In that sense, state collapse is widely perceived as
a conflict that exceeds by far the threshold of accepted forms of conflict set
by the moral boundaries of international society (see, for example, Johnson,
1993). Serge Sur encapsulated the imagery of the recent upsurge in the
phenomenon of state collapse in the following almost apocalyptic terms:
2. Mikhail Bakunin (1814–1876), also known as the ‘father of modern Anarchism’, opposed
the statist implications of Karl Marx’s thinking and advocated violent revolution with the
immediate aim of eliminating all political, social and religious institutions and replacing
them with a free federation of independent associations (see Bakunin, 1873). Robert
Nozick, a liberal political philosopher, formulated a restatement of the theory of the
liberal state advocating the establishment of a ‘minimal state’ in which only the least
powerful political arrangements would be compatible with the protection of rights of
individuals as all political order is a prima facie interference with a natural right to pursue
one’s ends (Nozick, 1974). While these two theories position themselves at opposite
extremes of the traditional right–left political spectrum, they share an open rejection of the
state as a legitimate and desired form of political organization of human societies.
Implications for Peace-Building and Reconstruction
823
‘The state or barbarism, such is the simple alternative with which international society is faced’ (Sur, 1997: 426).
The frustration of international society in the face of the phenomenon of
state collapse can be better understood when we consider that state
disintegration in a world divided entirely into states automatically raises
questions about the impact of protracted domestic conflicts on international
stability. Security in the world — that world being primarily a society of
states — is largely predicated on the internal stability of the member states
of the international system. In that sense, the state is the primary model not
only of domestic public order but also of international stability. The disappearance of public order in a state thus constitutes a prime threat to international security. In fact, civil wars have always posed security challenges to
international society. State collapse, representing one of the worst forms of
civil war, accentuates such challenges.
The international community is also increasingly aware that the more
interindependent the world becomes, the more the descent of a state into
Hobbesian anarchy can affect peace and security. From a state-oriented
perspective, therefore, the challenge posed by state collapse to international
society is how to tackle the destabilizing effects of Hobbesian anarchy for
regional and international security. Accordingly, efforts to assist in the resurrection of a Hobbesian Leviathan — any form of effective central authority
that can ensure law and order — tend to be the automatic response of
international society to the challenges of state collapse:
Hobbesian solutions are minimalist in that they do no more than restore minimum order in
the community. The guns fall silent, but the essential conditions of human dignity, which the
fundamental instruments of the international community have prescribed as essential to the
legitimacy of governments, have not been attained. The Hobbesian solution, nonetheless,
recommends itself, because the state is the only technique we have, to date, that can provide
the basic conditions prerequisite to a life of human dignity. (Reisman, 1997: 418)
The evident frustration of international society when facing the phenomenon of state collapse can be attributed to the lack of precise conceptions
about state disintegration, and to the absence of comprehensive international
mechanisms to respond effectively to the challenges posed by the disappearance of effective central governments and the emergence of powerful non-state
actors. And yet, as noted above, state collapse was first contemplated as
having mainly regional, rather than global, security implications (historically
a common feature of protracted civil wars). To understand its rise to importance as a central issue in post-Cold War international politics, we must
turn our attention to the linking of two previously separate factors in the
post-Cold War international environment.
The Advent of Human Rights and Humanitarian Values
The recent upsurge in concern over state collapse has been accompanied by
questions about the physical security and, indeed, the very survival of peoples
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trapped in collapsed states. In fact, state collapse emerged as a major issue in
post-Cold War international politics as a result of the humanitarian crises
that usually accompany state disintegration. As Ian Brownlie notes, ‘it is
relevant to recall that some of the world’s examples of human rights abuses
and refugee flows in the recent past have involved the collapse of states’
(Brownlie, 1995: 56).
The phenomenon of state collapse is, indeed, widely associated in contemporary international relations with issues such as humanitarian disasters,
‘humanitarian intervention’ and the debate about the emergence of a ‘droit
d’inge´rence’ (Roberts, 1993). This human rights perspective on state collapse
would until recently have been beyond the grasp of international society in
that it touches upon the hard core of the domestic political order of states
and thus encroaches upon traditional perceptions of state sovereignty.
However, the centre of gravity in international relations has shifted away
from exclusively state-centred considerations and increasingly towards the
individual. In the process, international society has been gradually transformed from a system exclusively focused on states to ‘an international
society with a human face’. Part of this development (and also illustrating it)
is the progressive incorporation of human rights and humanitarian values
into the international political and normative structure. Policy and decisionmaking language has changed, and so has the conduct of states and international governmental and non-governmental organizations.
Paradoxically, a human rights perspective on state collapse raises questions
similar to those created by effective but oppressive regimes. The difference,
perhaps, is that while in the latter case there is ‘too much state’ in the former
there is too little, if any state at all. The experience, for instance, of the
Somali people who passed from the highly oppressive and brutal Siad Barre
regime (1969–91) to the on-going tyranny and irresponsible rule of the
so-called warlords has left the local population and the international
community wondering which of the two situations is better. Or is it simply a
case of moving from Scylla to Charybdis?3
The situation in Afghanistan under the infamous Taliban regime also
illustrates the irony of the argument that any authority is better than no
authority at all, with respect both to the well-being of a large proportion of
the local population and the benefit to international stability. The establishment of effective Taliban rule in the majority of the country did not prevent
the new regime from sheltering international terrorists, from increasing
exponentially the production and export of opium, from virtually enslaving
women, and from committing atrocities against ethnic and religious minority
groups in the north of the country.
3. ‘No one can convince me that Hitler Germany was better than no German government, or
that the Pol Pot government was better than no Cambodian government’, Sigurd Illing,
the EU Special Envoy to Somalia (1993–97), in Von Hippel (1999: 199).
Implications for Peace-Building and Reconstruction
825
According to Stanley Hoffmann, the most challenging humanitarian
crises are ‘in fact, ‘‘structural’’, provoked either by the disintegration of a
state or by the deliberate evil policies of a government’ (Hoffman, 1993: 9).4
From a human rights perspective, therefore, collapsed states and tyrannical
regimes pose an almost identical intellectual challenge to international
society: what is the role of the international community in protecting human
life and dignity in cases where there is no public authority capable and/or
willing to do so? The formulation of state collapse as a humanitarian challenge also challenges the misleading dilemma between ‘state and barbarism’,
and its plausible corollary that any authority is better than no authority at
all. From a human rights perspective, the major question posed to international society by state collapse is not how to restore authority, but how to
restore structures of authority that can ensure the protection of the basic
interests and values of the population, such as life and dignity. In other
words, order does not require just any kind of authority; it requires effective
and legitimate public authority.
The humanitarian challenge has thus been a critical factor in the emergence of state collapse as an issue of major international concern during the
post-Cold War period. However, the international system, traditionally
preoccupied with inter-state relations and disputes, was largely unprepared
and unequipped, in terms of both ideas and practice, to address the humanitarian challenges of state collapse. How then was the phenomenon of state
collapse articulated as an issue of international concern in the post-Cold
War policy and decision-making processes?
The Re-emergence of ‘Interventionism’ in the Post-Cold War Period
In the aftermath of the Cold War, proponents of both ‘End of History’ and
‘New World Order’ theories advocated the principles of market economy
and multiparty democracy as global recipes for development, peace and
stability. When needed, these were to be coupled with an assertive multilateralism based on reinvigorated collective security mechanisms of the
United Nations. The ‘Agenda for Peace’ launched in 1992 by the then UN
Secretary General, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, as a strategy of the international
community for peace and development into the twenty-first century, largely
echoed this optimism. The Cold War equilibrium of power that had been
unfavourable to overt coercive intervention in domestic conflicts had
disappeared, and the doctrine of ‘New World Order’ and the aspirations of
the UN ‘Agenda for Peace’ were converging in the adoption of assertive
4. See also Heinbecker (1999: 6), who argues that ‘even in the emerging cyber world, order
requires rules, rules require authority, and authority is exercised on behalf of people by
states. In fact, disintegrating states appear to be as dangerous to their citizens as
tyrannies’.
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Alexandros Yannis
responses to international challenges. In the early 1990s, it was widely
believed that the global policing role of the UN Security Council, originally
envisaged by Franklin Roosevelt and the other victorious protagonists of
World War II, was close to becoming reality. On 31 January 1992, during
the first ever UN Security Council meeting at the level of Heads of State and
Government, the participants agreed that ‘their meeting was a timely recognition of the fact that there are new favourable international circumstances
under which the Security Council has begun to fulfil more effectively its
primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and
security’ (UN Security Council, 1992a: 2).
This optimism and enthusiasm were soon tested, however. One prominent
challenge was created by the 1992–95 international operations in Somalia,
which plunged the international community headlong into its first encounter
with the realities of the new generation of peace operations. The Somalia
intervention set a precedent in international politics as, for the first time, the
UN Security Council authorized the use of coercive military force under
Chapter VII of the UN Charter, not as a response to an act of aggression,
but for humanitarian reasons and, eventually, for peace-building operations
in a domestic conflict. The Somalia intervention also attempted to set a
pattern for international responses to the challenges of the post-Cold War
world. Speaking during the UN Security Council meeting of 3 December
1992, which authorized the US-led ‘humanitarian intervention’ in Somalia,
the then US representative to the United Nations stated that ‘by acting in
response to the tragic events in Somalia, the international community is also
taking an important step in developing a strategy for dealing with the
potential disorder and conflicts of the post-Cold War world’ (UN Security
Council, 1992b: 36).
The Somalia adventure, however, was a failure. It prompted the conclusion that a more integrated and comprehensive approach (taking into
account and balancing both the state-oriented and the human rights
perspectives) would be necessary in order to tackle effectively the different
challenges of state collapse (Stiftung et al., 1995: 25–40). In assessing the
intervention in Somalia, Boutros Boutros-Ghali stated that ‘the situation in
Somalia will continue to deteriorate until the political will exists among the
parties to reach a peaceful solution to their dispute, or until the international
community gives itself new instruments to address the phenomenon of a
failed state’ (Boutros-Ghali, 1996: 87). Much has happened since then and
the ‘new interventionism’ has gained momentum, the establishment of international administrations in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo, and East Timor
being some major manifestations. The question of the day is how interventions can be made more effective in establishing stability and promoting
international security. The emerging paradigm is that while a military
intervention can address the symptoms of a crisis and bring peace, a more
comprehensive operation is required in order to address the root-causes of a
crisis and restore lasting stability.
Implications for Peace-Building and Reconstruction
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The events of September 11 not only brought the question of state
collapse to the forefront of international politics but also gave an additional
impetus to debates about how to respond to state collapse. A key question
in Afghanistan, for example, is whether the removal of the Taliban regime
has fulfilled the objectives of the intervention, or whether a comprehensive
follow-up peace operation is needed in order to help restore lasting stability
in the country. September 11 can also be credited with taking the debate
about state collapse a step further. As already noted, collapsed states were
for many years regarded as parochial conflicts and the phenomenon of state
collapse was normally exorcized as Hobbesian anarchy or sheer barbarism
and other aphorisms of this kind. September 11 turned the question of state
collapse into a major issue for international security. At this juncture, it is
unclear what the next twist in the tale might be. Yet, some tentative
conclusions regarding the normative implications of the phenomenon of
state collapse for peace-building and reconstruction can be drawn from the
observations made so far.
IMPLICATIONS FOR PEACE-BUILDING AND RECONSTRUCTION
The process of developing normative conceptions for international responses
to state collapse is subject to the same antinomy that characterizes the
relationship between human rights and the international system. From a
systemic perspective, states have a right to determine their own political,
social, and economic system free from external interference; a human rights
perspective, however, supports the imposition of important limitations upon
sovereign freedoms by international rules (Schachter, 1991: 15). Given that
the current international system lacks the comprehensive centralized mechanisms to develop, interpret and enforce international rules authoritatively,
this antinomy could become an insurmountable obstacle for the further
development of the international system. Difficult issues are inevitably left
to be resolved in the arena of power politics.
It is therefore logical that such rules are often perverted to become
instruments of foreign policy and end up bearing little relation to the
meaning and the objectives for which they were originally conceived and
agreed. This is the difficulty that lies at the heart of the discourse on state
collapse. In the absence of a centralized international structure, the antinomy
between ‘state sovereignty’ and ‘people’s rights’ constitutes the Achilles’ heel
of the international system for the development of a more integrated international society. In the words of James Mayall, ‘it is the ungoverned nature
of the state system and the deep attachment to the principle of state
sovereignty, however chimerical it may prove to be, that explain the
resistance of international society to improvement (i.e. to any progressive
evolution towards a solidarity community of mankind), rather than any
particular configuration of power’ (Mayall, 1996: 6).
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Alexandros Yannis
Towards a More Legitimate and Effective International System
The emergence of normative conceptions of state collapse is part of the
tendency of the international community to go beyond state-centrism and to
build a system that penetrates the political order of states to better protect
the interests of peoples and individuals. However, as the failures of the
international community in responding to state collapse reveal, the current
international constitutive order is very limited when trying to tackle modern
challenges. The phenomenon of state collapse thus calls for further development of the international system. This includes not only rules and normative
conceptions but also procedures and mechanisms for their authoritative
interpretation and application.5 In the case of human rights and humanitarian law, frequently selective and occasionally abusive invocation and application undermine their already fragile universal legitimacy and acceptance. So,
too, further development of normative conceptions and rules for responding to
state collapse require the parallel development of the institutional framework
of the international system. This is the only way to ensure the consistent
interpretation and application and thereby crystallization of those rules, and
to enhance the rule of law, peace and stability.
As with human rights and humanitarian issues, the emergence of normative
conceptions on state collapse appears also to reflect the efforts of the international system to address modern challenges at the level that they are
raised. In that sense, it underscores the gradual shift from the traditional
concept of the international system as a society of antagonistic states, to the
idea of the international community as a society sharing and pursuing
common interests and values. The elevation of the phenomenon of state
collapse into a preoccupation of international society also reflects the
growing influence on international politics of issues of global concern such
as environmental and demographic pressures, human rights and humanitarian concerns or threats related to nuclear and biological weapons.
However, such a bottom-up community-building process at the international
level is still a long way from producing satisfactory results.
First, trends for the development of a more integrated international system
are crippled by the fact that the elaboration and adoption of international
rules and norms are not often accompanied by changes in the institutional
framework of the international legal system, which would be the only way to
achieve their uniform and consistent interpretation and application. Second,
counter-trends to the process of community-building at the international
level, such as the re-emergence of unilateral action as a legitimate choice of
foreign policy, particularly by stronger states, seriously undermine efforts
5. See the argument of Schmidt (1998) that the international relations discourse of anarchy
(whether domestic or international anarchy) is historically associated with demands for
greater centralization of the international system.
Implications for Peace-Building and Reconstruction
829
to develop a consensus about the values and interests of the international
community. To avoid the concept of state collapse being reduced to the
hierarchical perceptions of the international system, applied for the benefit
and perceived interests of third party states or groups of states, its normative
content requires further clarification and crystallization.
On the one hand, exorcizing the concept of state collapse does not provide
an adequate response to the increasingly demanding human rights and
humanitarian concerns of international society. On the other, the continuation of the present ambiguity that surrounds the normative meaning of
state collapse is even more risky, as it can only add grist to the mill of those
theories that advocate a return to the ethos of colonialism or the emergence
of new hierarchies and divisions within the international system. Thus, the
emergence of a normative concept of state collapse underscores the need for
a significant overhaul of the international system in order to adapt to the
changing requirements of modern international life. Effective reconstruction
and peace-building efforts require a more comprehensive communitybuilding effort by international society, but also the political commitment to
undertake and sustain action in support of all those affected by state
collapse. In a normative understanding, this would not be an exercise of
charity or ‘a right to humanitarian intervention’. Rather, it would be a
moral and legal obligation of solidarity and a responsibility to protect (see
International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, 2001).
The upsurge of unilateralism in international politics demonstrates that
we should not underestimate the influence of theories favouring the dismantling of the current universalistic architecture of the international system.
Nonetheless, the main question for international society is not unilateral,
but multilateral (Yannis, 1999: 174–99). That is, how can international
society reconcile the principle of self-determination of peoples with the
increasing influence of social demands and requirements for the protection
of human rights, the delivery of humanitarian assistance and (perhaps above
all) the preservation of international stability?
The dilemma contained in this question can be encapsulated through
examining the post-Cold War debate over consensual peace-keeping and
coercive peace-enforcement operations. The Somalia experience again provides useful guidance. For some, the intervention in Somalia was mainly
an operational debacle. They have argued that collapsed states should
automatically be placed under comprehensive international administration
in the form of trusteeship, authorized under the peace-enforcement powers
of Chapter VII of the UN Charter, with the mandate to undertake all action
necessary to resuscitate an effective and responsible central governmental
authority. For others, the Somalia operation was a conceptual failure
because peace-building efforts require consent and active support of the
local population. The latter have argued that sovereignty and selfdetermination are not merely legal concepts of theoretical importance, but
rather provide the indispensable political and social realities upon which
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Alexandros Yannis
peace and stability and efforts for the reconstruction of collapsed states are
predicated (Stanton, 1993: 14–16).
This debate has significant practical implications for international involvement in collapsed states. Most prominently, an entirely different international
machinery needs to be developed and employed for peace-enforcement
approaches than for approaches based on the basic premises of peacekeeping such as consent and neutrality. The experiences of Kosovo and East
Timor have taken the debate a step further. A more coercive approach in
peace-enforcement operations has been acknowledged as a credible alternative
to local consent for addressing complex conflicts such as those in Kosovo
and East Timor. Yet, these very same experiences have also demonstrated
that coercive and robust approaches have their limits, and that they are not
sustainable unless they build legitimacy and accountability among the local
population (see Chopra, this volume). In other words, even where the
requirement for local consent has been formally removed, success requires
that an international administration develops a model of good governance
ensuring the accountability of the international authority to the local
population and their democratic representation and participation in the
work of the international administration (Williams, 2000; Yannis, 2001).
In Search of an ‘International Community’
In fact, the debate about the factors of legitimate and effective responses to
state collapse cannot be addressed in abstract, but only within the context of
the international system in which they operate. Peace-enforcement
approaches are normally conceived as policing actions in the interest of
the international community, and thus require a centralized international
system that can authoritatively articulate, interpret and enforce the common
interests and values of the community. In other words, it requires the existence of a genuine international community. In the absence of a centralized
international system, peace-enforcement approaches risk being perverted,
and becoming an arm of the foreign policy of states, based on the selfinterpretation of community interests by individual states to suit their national
interests, or on the occasional convergence of such national interests and the
formation of alliances by groups of states that support peace-enforcement
approaches as a preferred course of action.
In the early stages of the post-Cold War era, the UN Security Council was
portrayed as a credible alternative mode of governance in the absence of
a centralized international system. In this scenario, the UN was to provide
the authoritative collective security mechanism that could articulate and
enforce the interests and values of the international community. However,
the post-Cold War efforts of the Security Council to translate into action the
doctrines of the ‘New World Order’ and the ‘Agenda for Peace’ have been
a frustrating experience. In his examination of the UN Security Council in
Implications for Peace-Building and Reconstruction
831
the post-Cold War period, Helmut Freudenschuß reaches the following
conclusion:
While the objective criteria — universality and a legal framework — for a system of
collective security have existed for quite some time now, its subjective elements such as
consistent international solidarity, consensus on what is wrong, preparedness to cede
executive authority to the UN, readiness ‘to bear any burden and pay any price’ for the
consequences of collective decisions — have always been lacking and are likely to continue to
be so. As long as the much quoted ‘international community’ remains an elusive
phenomenon, true collective security will remain an elusive chimera as well. (Freudenschuß,
1994: 530–1)
Indeed, despite spectacular changes over the last few centuries in several
aspects of international life, the internal logic of the international system
still remains quite similar to that which prevailed in its early days. It is above
all a decentralized system composed of antagonistic states that formally coexist in a horizontal structure based on the principle of sovereign equality,
but that in practice interact in a largely anarchic way, based on power
relations. While this situation may be inadequate to address effectively
modern international challenges at the level that they are raised, it would,
nonetheless, be unfortunate to confuse the desires of international society
with the real capabilities of the current structures of the international
system.
Developing normative conceptions and mechanisms to tackle state
collapse and to assist those trapped in collapsed states emerges as a major
task for the international community. In addressing this task, however, it
is important to remember that international involvement and assistance
cannot be predicated on the ethics of dependency but only on respect for the
dignity of those in need. Thus, under the present international political and
legal order, respect for the principle of self-determination of peoples is a sine
qua non condition for international involvement in state-building operations.
In the absence of a centralized international system or any credible alternative
to articulate a legitimate response of the international community to the
challenges of state-building, the principles of sovereign equality and selfdetermination still serve as a necessary point of departure. This does not
mean that the international community is left powerless in its efforts to
influence the peace and reconstruction process in a collapsed state or that
it should remain idle when facing the challenges of state collapse. Rather, it
means that international involvement should always be conceived, designed
and implemented only as a complementary effort to indigenous initiatives
for peace-making and state-building. Building local consensus on what is
right and what is wrong provides a more solid basis for sustainable solutions.
While the international system remains a decentralized structure, the challenges of state collapse can be effectively tackled by developing conceptions
and instruments for constructive engagement between the international
community and the various local actors in the peace and reconstruction
process of collapsed states. In fact, a central question that arises is how the
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Alexandros Yannis
international community can relate to collapsed states — or, essentially,
how the international community can relate to sub-state actors. This requires
not only the further elaboration of mediation techniques but also adjustment
in the approaches of the international community to the realities and dynamics
of the phenomenon of state collapse and domestic conflicts of this kind.
For example, there is no place for the over-simplified view that the
warring groups in a domestic conflict are always ‘warlords’ or ‘criminals’ or
‘extremists’, not worth the respect of the outside world as legitimate representatives of their communities. In Somalia, and Bosnia, in Sierra Leone,
and in Liberia, Albania, Afghanistan, Tadjikistan, and everywhere else
where disputes have escalated into violent conflict, the rival groups and their
leaders are often the only representatives of highly divided and traumatized
communities, whether the international community likes it or not. In the
middle of a violent conflict, and in the absence of a centralized and automatic international machinery for assistance, neither the domestic civil society
nor the international community can provide more reliable guarantees than
the leaders of rival groups for protection of the primordial interests of the
local population; and what is more primordial than security? The challenge
here is to turn these groups from military rivals to partners in peace and
democratic politics.
Furthermore, modern challenges require modern answers. The international system needs to develop new rules and institutions to deal with
the ramifications of civil wars. As part of this, it needs to better address the
antinomy between a state-centrism that discourages interference in the
internal political order of states, and the modern aspiration for building a
human-centred international society that requires increasing regulation of
the conduct and consequences of domestic conflicts. Principles such as
democratization, good governance and the rule of law that have been used
as major peace-building instruments in the post-Cold War period require
additional normative development, clarification and incorporation in the
legal machinery of the international system in order to develop their full
potential (Yannis, 1997).
CONCLUSIONS
The elevation of the phenomenon of state collapse into a major issue of
post-Cold War international politics raises two central challenges. With
respect to the international normative architecture, it calls for greater
development of the rules, procedures and institutions of the international
political and legal system, towards the creation of a more centralized and
representative international society capable of responding effectively and
legitimately to modern challenges. With respect to the functioning of the
international system, it calls for greater development of the international
rules, procedures and institutions which could enable the international
Implications for Peace-Building and Reconstruction
833
community to deal effectively and legitimately with local authorities and
other sub-state actors who exercise de facto sovereign authority in collapsed
states. In other words, the phenomenon of state collapse calls for a more
sophisticated international system, which can balance effectively the demands
for a more centralized and supranational structure with the requirements for
a more flexible and transnational functioning of the international system.
Second, order requires rules and rules require public authority, whether in
the form of supranational administration, state government, or community
governance (Keohane and Nye, 1998: 82). Focusing exclusively on the
resuscitation of state authority can be misleading. Public authority and
public order can also be built on forms of governance at the suprastate or
sub-state level, but any public authority today must also be based on local
support and popular legitimacy. Therefore, so long as the international
system remains highly decentralized, sovereignty and self-determination will
also remain the ideological underpinnings of legitimacy of public authorities
at the state and local level, and the basis for intrusive international action in
collapsed states.
Third, it is critical not to lose sight of the fact that state collapse is above
all about conflict and thus reflects power struggles between competing
groups over fundamental values and interests of the community such as life,
prosperity, freedom, or justice. As well as developing the necessary conceptions and mechanisms to rationalize and deal with the ramifications of
state collapse, an additional challenge that state collapse presents to the
international community is how to develop adequate instruments to tackle
the underlying causes of state collapse such as poverty, injustice, and
discrimination.
Finally, the development of adequate international machinery to respond
to state collapse largely depends on the degree of community feeling among
the members of international society. When a member of a community, in
any societal formation, needs assistance — whether because of natural disaster
or because it is under attack, by members of the group or from outside —
the community is supposed to mobilize its resources and sustain an openended commitment to help the victim based mainly on the universal values
of solidarity and justice. It is therefore worth asking whether it is only the
machinery to deal with state collapse that is missing from the international
system today, or also the community values that are required in order to
develop adequate international responses?
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Alexandros Yannis has studied Law and International Relations in the Law
School of Athens University, the Graduate Institute of International Studies
in Geneva (IUHEI) and the School of International and Public Affairs of
Columbia University in New York (SIPA). He is Research Fellow in the
Programme for Strategic and International Security Studies in Geneva
(PSIS) and in the Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy in
Athens (ELIAMEP). He was an Adviser to the European Union Special
Envoy to Somalia (1994–97) and Political Adviser to the Special Representative of the UN Secretary General in Kosovo (1999–2000). He has published
numerous articles in the fields of conflict prevention, management and
resolution and a book on Kosovo Under International Administration.