The latest (May/June 2006) issue of Foreign Policy mag– right, the one with the letters and discussion about my recent war-crimes courts article– landed on our front stoop last week. It has a seductively graphicized nine-page layout presenting the results of the 2nd annual “Failed States Index” that FP has produced in cooperation with the (also DC-based) Fund for Peace.
Two of these pages carry a large world map, with “Critical” (i.e., crisis-ridden) states in burgundy; “In danger” states in orange; “Borderline” states in yellow, etc. Well, that’s most of the states in the world they have colored there. “Stable” and “Most stable” states are in shades of grey.
What does it mean, I wonder, to say that (for example) Mexico is a “borderline” state?
Actually, one aspect of this color-coding system really aroused my distrust. There are exactly 20 countries in each color zone… Either this is an amazing coincidence, or the colors are assigned according to purely “batch-processing” (i.e. on-a-curve) criteria, rather than representing some objective judgment made about their degree of criticality.
… So then, you turn the page and discover the impressive array of numbers on which these rankings are based. Here, all 60 states in the “colored” categories are assessed according to 12 “Indicators of instability”. Judged most “unstable” are Sudan (total score for instability = 112.3 out of a possible 120), DRC (110.1), Ivory Coast (109.2), and then Iraq (109.0).
On this scoreboard, US-“liberated” Iraq romps home ahead of (i.e., more unstable than) Zimbabwe, Chad, Somalia, Haiti, etc.
Interesting.
I, however, am equally interested in the methodology used here. At the end of the piece, they say you can find out more about the methodology if you go either to FP’s website, or to that of the Fund for Peace. I totally couldn’t find anything related to the topic at the FP site. (Though they do have a jaunty and engaging new blog over there, written by staffers. Also, now, a clean online version of my recent piece on war-crimes courts.)
But info on the methodology of the “Failed States Index”? Nope.
I went to the FFP site, and found this page, which is apparently about the 2005 Failed States Index… So through that one, you can arrive at this page, which provides a portal to definitions of each of the 12 “indicators of instability” and shows how you aggregate the scores, derive trend-lines over time, etc.
The “next step” after that one is interesting. It declares quite straightforwardly that,
- For sustainable security, a state should have the following Core Five:
* A competent domestic police force and corrections system
* An efficient and functioning civil service or professional bureaucracy
* An independent judicial system that works under the rule of law
* A professional and disciplined military accountable to a legitimate civilian government
* A strong executive/legislative leadership capable of national governance
That’s where you can see how present-day Iraq performs so abysmally. I mean, you can have all the elections and referenda and coalitional horsetrading that you want in a country– but if the “government” thus formed is not linked to any actually functioning institutions of governance, then it doesn’t mean very much, does it?
So the FFP’s “methodology” is called “CAST”, for Conflict Assessment System Tool. Over the past few years, I have made quite a lot of use of a “rival” governance-crisis assessment tool– the one that Swisspeace pioneered, which is called “FAST”.
FAST uses a slightly different approach. Swisspeace uses it for only a limited number of countries. But for those, they have tried (not always successfully) to produce a quarterly rating. What they count are just a few broad categories of things, falling into these categories:
- — Conflictive and Cooperative Domestic Events
— Conflictive Domestic Non-government and Government Events
–Country Stability and Cooperative International Events
They provide graphs of the trends for these over time. Equally importantly, they also provide a narrative explanation of what we see on the graph, with a quick interpretation of the main trends in state of the country’s governance. I find this very useful– though I realize that any user is very dependent on the experience, integrity, and analytical skill of the expert who provides the narrative each quarter.
As I remarked here on JWN a while back, the whole current wave of enthusiasm for “political early warning” tools of these kinds dates back to the Rwanda crisis of 1994. The other main one that I know of is the International Crisis Group’s “CrisisWatch“, which is produced monthly. From my perspective, I find that the least useful of the three.
In general, it’s excellent that all that work is being done. We can now know to within a whisker that North Korea is 0.6 degrees more unstable than Burundi… But still, I wonder: once we know all these things, what can we do about them? That is surely the problem! Are we going, for example, to stop exporting arms to these countries? Are we going to invest huge amounts in building in such states decent education and health-care systems? Are we going to change the terms of trade so that farmers and other producers in low-income countries have free and fair access to EU and US markets? Are we going to beat our own swords into plowshares and demonstrate to people that we know that there are better ways to resolve problems than through militarism and violence?
Well, are we?
If we don’t take those further, quite necessary steps, then it strikes me there is a degree almost of self-aggrandizing voyeurism involved if all we are prepared to do is to sit here in the safe, secure west daintily charting how dysfunctional all “those peoples”‘ countries have become…
[What does it mean, I wonder, to say that (for example) Mexico is a “borderline” state?]
IMO, this is same old neoconservative ideology in slightly different incarnation. The way it works, somebody like Freedom House computes what they call “freedom index” for all countries. Then it appears that say Denmark is perfectly “free”, US is doing pretty good, Israel is slightly worse, France is even worse, etc, etc.
Just curious, how “stable” is Israel on this map?
[US-“liberated” Iraq romps home ahead of (i.e., more unstable than) Zimbabwe, Chad, Somalia, Haiti, etc.]
Hmmmm… Somalia is absolutely and persistently unstable. It is hard to imagine how a country can be more unstable than this! Chad is in the state of hot civil war, this is a different story. On the contrary, Zimbabwe is relatively stable although dirt poor. Haiti si not that bad as Chad or Somalia.
Looks like pure pseudo-science to me.
Henry, you say you reject it and then you go off on an identical trip yourself.
That’s because you are just as post-modernist as the CASTs and the FASTs.
“Governance” is bosh. It is the “school of business” approach to politics. Where is democracy? Sorry, that’s only a “nice-to-have”.
To hell.
[Henry, you say you reject it and then you go off on an identical trip yourself.]
I never did any “identical trip” 🙂 What they do is computing some fake “stability indexes”. What I do is checking what happens in different countries informally.
As for “post-modernism”, I have no idea what those who use it want to say. IMO, this is just a meaningless label.
One dimension I think is lacking in these indicators is the qualitative one. There must be a difference between conflict settings where the key groups have separatist ambitions and those where the idea of maintaining the territorial integrity of the existing polity remains popular. I think both southern Iraq and the eastern (Shiite-inhabited) parts of Saudi Arabia are important in this regard: while Western think-tanks often tend to consider them as obvious candidates for fostering secessionist movements, the historical record shows a much more balanced picture, with separatism on the whole constituting a rather marginal trend in both regions.
Actually it is not necessary for you to understand post modernism, Henry.
What would be nice would be if you understood democracy.
But you are stuck somwhere in a black hole between Malthus and Maslow, Bishop Berkely and Jeremy Bentham.
From Reidar I think we are learning that the Iraqis have far more to teach the USA about democracy than they understand themselves these days.
Here is one explanation of what is really going on. One certainly can compare socio-economic indicators all over the world: GDP, medium annual income, birth mortality, malnutrition, curable illnesses, other state of healthcare and education indicators.
One can also compare levels of guerilla activity, like # of guerilla attacks, # of victims, etc. These numbers are meaningful.
But then unpleasant things will turn out. For example, we’ll see that anti-Israeli guerilla activity by Hamas and others is actually negligible in comparison with what happens in other regions.
Also, anything close to meaningful discussion of socio-economical issues is an anathema for the neocons. What they want to justify GWOT is to talk about “freedom”, “stability” whatever it is. Once there is “scientific numeric proof” that certain region is not “free” and “stable”, the next step is to use military force.
Typo: As for “post-modernism”, I have no idea what those who use this word really want to say. IMO, this is just a meaningless label.
Henry, I repeat, you are excused from attempting to understand post-modernism. It happens to be irrational, anyway. So by all means, don’t bother.
You ducked on “democracy”. Perhaps we could come back to that later.
Meanwhile, how about “empirical”? Does that ring any bells with you?
Ummm, how about instead of name-calling we get back to discussing the subject at hand? Dominic?
Reidar, I quite agree with you that the qualitative aspect of the analysis is irreplaceable. The example you give is only one of a number of persuasive reasons why this is so. That’s why I prefer Swisspeace’s approach. Of course, it takes more time to do, and you have to pay a hopefully experienced analyst at hopefully appropriate rates, rather than just programing a computer to scan and count “events” or paying squads of grad students to do something only a little more sophisticated than that.
Still, I find that there is also something (perhaps voyeuristically?) interesting about seeing the results of CAST’s broader-brush approach. Perhaps, though, it is like the HDI– an index that has been refined and strengthened over time…. I should note, though, that UNDP has to invest a huge amount of resources in refining and updating the HDR every year. I don’t think the Fund for Peace has anything like that amount of budget.
The FP “failed states index” is a marketing brand variation on other surveys. Heritage Foundation measures “economic freedom.” Freedom House has its poll. The World Bank issues governance surveys. Transparency International calls it “corruption perceptions.” A few years ago, a big CPA firm even published a “fog index” to rank countries by the quality of financial disclosure.
Truth be told, all start with intuitive rankings which are nothing more than a (pretend we’re not peeking) mimick of the major credit agency sovereign ratings. These are driven mainly by macroeconomic ratios, with a geometric advantage to countries with high per capita GDP, low inflation, and debt ratios somewhere in the middle range. The other polls simply add some subjetive variants which rely on a very fuzzy sifting process.
The efficiency of a civil service or a police force is difficult to compare. Yes, there are obvious extreme cases. But how to compare Vietnam with Peru or Jordan? It’s hardly more than spin the bottle or “let your gut decide.” Homicide rates are the only crime statistic that allow for half-reliable international comparison. By that measure, the USA comes up pretty bad, which may be why it does not count.
Some indicators are self-contradictory. A survey may penalize “regulatory burdens” but value “financial system oversight.” How do you get one without the other?
Botswana is barely more than a protectorate of DeBeers and has weak socioeconomic fundamentals, yet comes out splendid on some surveys. Singapore, a microstate with a highly regimented political and social system, gets ranked as a model paradise.
If Mexico is borderline, why not its colonia norteña too? The USA has whopping unfunded pension liabilities, a yawning current account surplus, a concentrated reliance on one foreign creditor, an inflated real estate market teetering on the edge of an interest rate spike, a massive underground economy based on disenfranchised foreign labor, low or negative household savings rates, a one-party state, a judiciary beholden to executives and party hacks, corporate governance with little ability to tie executive compensation to performance, a world high incarceration rate, dismal results on academic performance surveys, a huge dependence on foreign oil from unstable places, voters who cannot even name their Congressman, a convoluted tax system that fosters massive and wasteful avoidance schemes, and a manufacturing sector that cannot compete. Yet it has an AAA rating, comes out in the top 10% of most stability or governance polls, has a stock market nearly back to ’99 bubble levels, and remains the preferred destination of most job seekers. Explain this. In the end, the poll results have to be massaged to complement the verdict of the final arbitror: the market.
I beg your pardon, but I don’t see where I’ve called Henry any names here. The problem is lack of a common vocabulary. He has said twice that he regards “post-modern” as meaningless and I’ve said twice that’s fine with me. But then we need other terms.
Henry doesn’t like the way that the empirical data are being used by the neocons as an arbitrary tripwire for war. Nor do I.
But in my view, so long as discussion is confined within the limits of empiricism, then all decisions will have to be made on such a basis, so we are no further on. The neocons would be entitled to ask (as “deciders”): How else are we supposed to decide?
The primary purpose of the generation of these (expensive?) indices in my opinion, is to overwhelm all other forms of judgement.
Helena, at least you recognise the distinction between qualitative and quantitative, but you then revert to a discussion of your preferences in quantitative indices.
I suppose you are arguing that there is a qualitative distinction made in the choice of the initial criteria of one index or another. But that is hardly enough, surely? It still leaves the subsequent research bound within those prior assumptions.
Nobody has yet said anything about Nepal on Just World News. Decisions about democracy are actually made in revolutionary circumstances of the kind that exist in Nepal now, quickly and dramatically. The slow marginal changes in between such decisive moments tell us very little. If the “index” approach to world affairs is based on a view that qualitative change is not precipitate but gradual, then it should be stated, and demonstrated. Actually, it can’t be. That’s why all these indices are spurious and fallacious, especially including the HDI.
Gradualism has produced nothing. Not even a cuckoo clock.
Good one, Koch.
As the man once said: The medium is the massage.