Failed States Index & “Failing the Faithful”

The July-August issue of Foreign Policy magazine features the 3rd installment of the annual “Failed States Index,” (FSI) a tool intended to identify the world’s “weakest links.” A project of “The Fund for Peace” and Foreign Policy (via its parent, the Carnegie Council for International “Peace”), this year’s top five “winners” are:

Sudan, Iraq, Somalia, Chad, and Zimbabwe.

This year’s FSI report covers 177 states, considerably more than the first two studies. Africa is well “represented” among “top” failed states, as are those in the Middle East and West Asia. Among the latter:

Afghanisan #8,
Pakistan #12,
Uzbekistan #22,
Yemen #24,
Lebanon #28,
Egypt #36,
Turkmenistan # 43

Iran, compared to its neighbors, comes in “relatively” well, with an FSI rank at #57. Israel comes in at 67, though no explanatory notes are provided to explain if “Israel” includes the occupied territories or not. “Palestine” is not covered. Conveniently, the study only provides country notes for the first 60 states.
With considerable hesitation, I concede that such reports may be useful in trimming away ideological biases while equipping citizens and policymakers alike to discern what areas of the world may be suffering from, or sliding toward, critical instability. Not just dangers to themselves, states on the verge of implosion “threaten the progress and stability of countries half a world away.” (Or so we say. But do we really believe it? That’s another subject.)
Yet this study’s utility, at least to me, slips when it starts with an “elastic” multi-functional definition of a “failed state.”

“A state that is failing has several attributes. One of the most common is the loss of physical control of its territory or a monopoly on the legitimate use of force. Other attributes of state failure include the erosion of legitimate authority to make collective decisions, an inability to provide reasonable public services, and the inability to interact with other states as a full member of the international community. The 12 indicators cover a wide range of elements of the risk of state failure, such as extensive corruption and criminal behavior, inability to collect taxes or otherwise draw on citizen support, large-scale involuntary dislocation of the population, sharp economic decline, group-based inequality, institutionalized persecution or discrimination, severe demographic pressures, brain drain, and environmental decay. States can fail at varying rates through explosion, implosion, erosion, or invasion over different time periods.”

To clarify a bit more, the “Failed States Index” is derived from an aggregation of 12 indicators of state performance:

1. Demographic pressures (e.g. too many people, compared to resources);
2. Refugees (desperate people on the move);
3. Group grievances (people hating each other);
4. Human Flight (brain drain);
5. Uneven development (too many poor);
6. Sudden economic collapse;
7. Deligitimization of the State;
8. Public Services Deterioration;
9. Rule of Law (lack thereof) and Human Rights Violations;
10. Security Confusion (states w/n states?);
11 Factionalism of elites;
12 External Penetration (foreign meddling)

One could get an honest “headache” deconstructing the definitions of each of these FSI indicators and numerous internal contradictions therein. I’ll spare readers, save for the worst.

For example, #10, the “state within a state” criterion, can refer to “praetorian guards” operating independently of the conventional state security “apparatus,” or it might refer to significant insurgencies. But might not a “successful” non-failing state have an especially powerful and secretive “security apparatus” to beat back rebel or secessionist threats? But if it had such a force, the FSI indicator would say it was a sign of failing?
Confused? Alas, I’m not from Michigan; I’ve long been something other than a fan of mainstream quantitative-driven political “science.” Besides, this “Fund for Peace” study instructs us that the Failed State Index has been a success (pun intended); that is, “peer reviewed” – even by scholars. No doubt. We’re just not given any links to such reviews.
Yet I am surely open to efforts that seek greater objective measures of states in crisis, or those facing various manifestations of trouble that need solutions, lest they too become what we used to call “unstable” or “revolutionary.” Today’s post-9/11, post-Taliban buzz word for the same phenomena: “failed states.” (The greater the propensity towards being a fully “failed” state, then the more prone it might be to “instability” or “revolutionary” pressure. Flip side of the same coin, albeit in 21st Century-speak, eh?)
I’m reminded by this latest study of indicators (of instability, revolution, or looming “failure”) of how useless so much of the standard social “science” models were in (not) anticipating the Iranian “revolution.” By the standard performance indicators of the 70’s, the Shah’s regime was the “model” of a “successful” and “powerful” state. It was precisely in the qualitative areas of “legitimacy” that the Shah’s regime was so fragile — e.g., nationalism, constitutionalism, and yes, human rights (as per local and international norms).
I might then be impressed by criterion #7 – “deligitimization” of the state” — which we are informed includes:

Massive and endemic corruption or profiteering by ruling elites;
Resistance of ruling elites to transparency, accountability and political representation;
Widespread loss of popular confidence in state institutions and processes, e.g., widely boycotted or contested elections, mass public demonstrations, sustained civil disobedience, inability of the state to collect taxes, resistance to military conscription, rise of armed insurgencies;
Growth of crime syndicates linked to ruling elites

Talk about elastic. It seems the “Fund for Peace” selects measures of “deligitimization” most amenable to statistical coding. How special…. Here again, up until early 1978, few of these indicators would have been flashing warnings about the Shah’s Iran. Yet those rare Iran observers not on the Shah’s or the CIA’s payroll recognized that the Shah legitimacy, by Iranian and global standards, was compromised from the moment he was re-installed on the throne by the US-UK orchestrated coup in 1953, after his brutal attempt to muzzle the clergy in 1963, by his subsuming his country’s foreign policy to the Americans’ agenda (etc. etc.).
Failing the Faithful
My last comment concerns the FSI “human rights” category. It’s good the subject is covered. The “successful” state in the early models of state “stability” would be one that kept the trains running on time, sewers working, new schools opening, bank vaults filling, etc. Now, we’re to watch for signs that the rights of the passengers, students, clients, – humans – matter. Human rights of course ordinarily include some reference to freedom of conscience and its twin, freedom of religion, and these issues then get us into the politically loaded and difficult to measure realms of what “freedom of religion” means — in practice (literally).
Oddly, the Foreign Policy report on the newest “Failed States Index” suggests that an especially politicized measurement tool of religious freedom was used. In a section entitled, “Failing the Faithful,” the Magazine flatly asserts that

“The world’s weakest states are also the world’s most religiously intolerant. Countries with a poor freedom of religion score are often most likely to meet their maker.”

That is, according to the graphic, “vulnerable states display a greater degree of religious intolerance.”
Too bad the correlation supposedly “proved” by the graphic isn’t exactly true, either now or in history. (The Jeffersonian in me wishes it were true, and maybe, in the “long run,” it will be…)
Iran gets branded #6 bad guy in this realm, behind Sudan, the Islamic Republic of Iraq, etc. Yet Saudi Arabia doesn’t show up in the graphic. If “religious intolerance” was a reliable indicator of looming instability, Saudi Arabia would have “failed” as a state long ago.
Foreign Policy indicates a source for its religious freedom data is the Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom, though no specific publication is cited. (Oddly, this center doesn’t post its reports on-line, from what I can tell?? Anybody out there have it?) I rather doubt though that the Hudson/CFR data was controlling, as their director, Nina Shea, has been quite the critic of Saudi practices in this realm. (when she’s not Iran/Khatami bashing)
To be charitable, perhaps the “Fund for Peace” and/or the Foreign Policy editors realized that including Saudi Arabia in this subject would ruin a really cool “orange” graphic. Or perhaps the piper called the tune.
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As a footnote, notice where the Failed States Index places the United States – near the “bottom” of the list. Well, “we aren’t the world,” and we can’t be #1 at everything. On the other hand (& heavy irony alert), maybe there’s “hope” for America yet.
Consider William Rivers Pitt’s depiction today of a “cresting wave of rage, betrayal and fury” spreading across “the heart of America.” If so, I anticipate the “Fund for Peace” number crunchers will be among the last to recognize it.