| Publication |
2012.
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| Summary/Abstract |
Since the 1990s, the notion of the 'failed state' has become a core organising concept in international, security and development idiom and practice. Although initially developed by policy networks, the proliferation of academic literature on 'failed states' accepts largely uncritically the accounts of foreign-policy makers, taking the notion of state failure entirely as given, as an unproblematic descriptive and analytical term. This article rejects such accounts, arguing that the concept of the 'failed state' remains essentially contested and under-theorised. In particular, the term immediately embodies a set of assumptions that obfuscate any serious understanding of the causes of social conflict and crisis. The article interrogates the concept of the 'failed state', the assumptions from which the thesis of 'state failure' is derived, its ideological character and integral relation to the history and current order of imperialism. The article does not refute the prevalence of social crises; rather, it contends that the notion of the 'failed state' is descriptively weak and analytically inadequate in furthering an understanding of the causes and conditions of such crises. Moving beyond critique, the article outlines a more adequate methodological, theoretical and substantive approach to analysis and explanation of social crises, centring on the structures and practices of imperialism.
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