José Francisco Pavia
INTRODUCTION
This article will try to demonstrate the possibility of a correlation between the Nation-State – or lack of – and the occurrence of armed conflicts. It will look towards a link between the fragilities of a State and the erratic, unstable nature which leads to the lack of, or indeed threatens the stability in the international system, whilst looking for a link between the two, we shall be disclosing these concepts. The African continent will be the core example of this situation.
NATION AND STATE
The concept of the state from a legal point of view is that it is “(…) a community in a specific territory in which they themselves created a political body with relative autonomy”.
The state comprises three elements, – people, territory and political power – therein we can only mention state when we conceive that all the above-mentioned elements have been gathered together.
By shining a light on the issues related to these elements we will come to the specific aspects of the concept, if we are looking at a people, a population or a nation. We will focus on the element people, we should ask ourselves why this is the most appropriate terminology to define the human element of the state; the answer lies with the fact that the element people, is perceived as a reality that can be a clear object that is defined by a legal and political framework, if we tried to determine the human element by using the term nation, we will find ourselves on the hard shoulder of subjectivity.
When we imply people, we understand this to be a human community with a legal-political bond to the state; we designate this bond as citizenship. As such, a person is considered part of the portuguese people due to the legal statutes regulated by the portuguese state.
The concept of nation, takes us to a much more subjective field, as such to find a consensus with a clear definition is very hard indeed. For some nation has been defined as a human community that shares a common language, culture, customs, traditions and a common history, with a wish to build a shared future.
The goal that nations have set is to form a political body, the state. Though, as we well know, a nation is not always identified as the state in question and when the nation does not coincide with the state, naturally we find situations that can generate tensions and can break out into armed conflicts.
FRAGILE STATES
This term has recently taken a half-scientific meaning; it is clearly very subjective, right from the beginning due to close definitions and concepts such as failed state, weak/faltering state, collapsed state, and rogue state among others. It is not our intention to put forward a new adjective, yet stride towards the heart of it and to try to understand why there are so many adjectives. It seems to us that all of these take off from the same point, the fact that these states cannot fulfill and guarantee the role traditionally given to them.
This role is – according to authors in general – to guarantee security, justice and socio-economic welfare. When these states for a number of reasons cannot carry out one or several of these tasks, we are in effect looking at a state faltering, which can reach different degrees of magnitude.
Indeed, this view is not free of criticism, due to its origin having been based on a concept of state akin to Westphalia’s treaty of 1648, and the understanding, as was mentioned, that the majority of authors have on which ends should be pursued.
Despite this controversy many authors continue to classify fragile states (we chose this adjective as it is the most inclusive and least disputed). As the issue of security concerns the international order we can relate to Francis Fukuyama when he stated: “Since the end of the cold war, weak or failed States have become the most important problem to the international order.”
In our opinion there is an exaggerated view that fragile states pose a threat to the stability of world order; after all the problem of international terrorism has complex roots that cannot simply be relating their origin and development due to the existence and proliferation of fragile states.
It is unlikely that London, Brussels, Paris, Madrid, New York, Boston, Orlando, Nice or Istanbul, are not exactly locations in fragile states; furthermore, the process of radicalization and the agents who carried out these acts of terrorism, in many cases were not carried out in fragile states.
We are not disregarding the consequences which are caused by fragile states; namely, Somalia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Nigeria or South Sudan and others. It seems to us that the constant and incorrect use of the term for political or ideological reasons ends up discrediting it, rendering it as an instrument of propaganda anathematizing the states, which they define as such.
THE AFRICAN CONUNDRUM
If there is a place with this situation, i.e. the non-coincidence of the nation with the state, that place is Africa. Presently (2021) with fifty-four independent countries in which the absolute majority of them fall in the category of multinational states. The origins of this situation are well known: the colonial heritage and the partition of Africa among the European colonial powers, especially after the Berlin conference of 1884-1885.
The endemic instability is the primary cause of the vicious circle of the nexus insecurity – underdevelopment that is present in most of the african countries. This theory is better known by the virtuous circle of the nexus security-development.
It is not by coincidence that the top three countries that year after year are in the first, second and third places of the Ibrahim Index of African Governance (IIAG) are Mauritius, Botswana and Cape Verde.
All of them fall in the category of nation-states and are liberal democracies. They have different colonial backgrounds, namely french, british and portuguese; two of them are archipelago countries (Mauritius and Cape Verde) and the other (Botswana) is a land-locked country in southern Africa.
By contrast, in the bottom of that ranking, we will find Somalia, South Sudan and the Central African Republic, all of them with different colonial backgrounds (Italian, British and French), but with extreme polarized societies with huge divisions in ethnicity, nationhood and religion.
CONCLUSIONS
It is not by chance that the list of countries presented above as examples of states reaching the limits of fragility are all categorical situations in which the nation does not coincide with the state.
Bearing in mind the theme of this article is: if the fact that the nation did not coincide with the state would this prove to be a fertile ground to produce an armed conflict?
The answer to this question is yes, though… this means that the preposition, effectively the lack of overlapping state and nation, can lead to new forms of armed conflicts; however, we should take into account other factors, among the most important is if the political system of the said country is democratic.
Another important factor is to assess if the state is overbearing in civil society and the economy; realizing this may seem out of scope when addressing the issue of fragile states. Yet the very fact of a state being excessively involved does not strengthen it, rather, this can be identified precisely as a symptom of its fragility and hinders society and democracy from developing.
To summarize, we can take the following conclusions:
a) If a country is formed by the coincidence of nation and state, if it is democratic and the state does not have an over bearing presence in the economy and civil society, it will be a safe and stable country.
The latest classifications on the safest countries in the world (June 2021) point exactly in that direction; Portugal, Denmark or Iceland being good examples and Cape Verde and Mauritius in the african continent, another good examples.
b) If a country is not formed by the coincidence of nation and state, yet if its democratic and the state do not have an excessive presence in the economy and society, it can be classified as safe, however it will always find itself in a less favorable position as the situation above. Examples: Ghana and Botswana.
c) If a country is not formed by the coincidence of nation and state, if it is not a democracy and has the over bearing presence of the state in civil society and its economy, inevitably it becomes a potentially unstable state – hence susceptible to armed conflicts – therefore fragile. (All the worst fifty states classified in the last ranking of fragile states (2020) – which starts with Yemen in first place and Papua-New Guinea in fiftieth place, they are within, to a greater or lesser degree, the framework set out in this third conclusion).
Unfortunately, our argument regarding Africa is totally demonstrated; thirty-five countries, out of that list of fifty, are african countries, corroborating the assumption that the non coincidence of a nation and a state, together with other factors, is a cause of fragility and instability, turning those countries more prone to non-democratic regimes and thus, to armed conflicts, that are simultaneously cause and consequence of it´s underdevelopment and bad-governance.
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José Francisco Pavia, Lusíada University of Lisbon.
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