The Political Economy of Fragile States and Implications for European Development Policy

Rapid decolonisation created many arbitrary countries. In contrast to the states which had emerged through a quasi-Darwinian process of selection, some of these new countries had structural characteristics which gravely impeded the provision of public goods. Their lack of a unifying sense of shared identity made co-operation difficult, and their tiny economic size left them unable to reap scale economies.

Two public goods, security and accountability, are particularly important for development, and so, where they could not be provided, states failed. The cause of a problem is not necessarily a guide to its solution: Darwinian struggle among failing states is not something to be encouraged. Solutions lie partly in a phase of international provision of the key public goods, partly in enhanced regional pooling of sovereignty, and partly in institutional innovation to make the domestic provision of public goods less demanding of the state.

Paper prepared for the Conference on “The challenges of fragility to development policy”, organised by the European Report of Development in Barcelona, Spain, 7-8 May, 2009.

European Report on Development 2009

Supported by the European Commission and seven Member States (Finland, France, Germany, Luxembourg, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom), the European Report on Development (ERD) is the main output of the "Mobilising European Research for Development Policies" initiative. This flagship report is published since 2009, with the aim of stimulating debate and research on topics of major relevance for development, as well as to enhance the European perspective in the international development arena.