State Erosion: Unlootable Resources and Unruly Elites in Central Asia

6. Weak and Failed States in Comparative Perspective

124 The core argument of this book is that weak states defined by low capital mobility have specific political ramifications for local elites. Those elites may command resources, but they cannot convert their resources into rents without patrons and protection within the state. This promotes various combinations of rent-seeking opportunities for local elites, which can be decisive during moments of political, economic, or social crisis. In some cases, a coercive rentseeking state emerges, which leads to cycles of coercion, extraction, dissent, and repression. Other cases succumb to state failure and are defined by fractious state apparatuses, unable to bind the“loyalty”of local elites to a national project of state building. In the preceding chapters, I used Tajikistan and Uzbekistan to develop this argument and elaborate these two paths. This chapter extends the argument to the subset of forty or so weak states whose economies are defined by low capital mobility. Using proxy indicators of these state security outcomes, I have identified similar patterns in more than two-thirds of these weak states since 1955 (see table 6.1). Approximately fifteen countries have experienced state security fragmentation (often leading to state failure), while across the same period thirteen countries have avoided fragmentation and witnessed the rise of cohesive state security apparatuses underpinned by rent seeking. These are long-lasting state formation trajectories, and there is little overlap between the two groups.1 At the same time,another eleven countries have managed to avoid either of these trajectories , despite their low capital mobility. How, then, can the vulnerability of weak states with immobile capital be assessed? How can we determine whether these 6 WEAK AND FAILED STATES IN COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE RECTO RUNNING HEAD 125 WEAK AND FAILED STATES IN COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE 125 states, when confronting a major crisis, will experience state security fragmentation or cohesion? And what forms of state will emerge? In this chapter I approach the problem of state failure by examining how state security infrastructures withstood a crisis. In particular, I examine how they confront a type of crisis that is traditionally seen as a “cause” of state failure, such as ethnic conflict or economic decline. In doing so, I attempt to assess the standing vulnerability of weak states when these developments occur. For purposes of consistency with my study of Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, I selected crises that— similar to the Soviet collapse—weakened institutional controls over local elites and generated uncertainty over elites’ access to rents. Using paired comparisons TABLE 6.1 State security outcomes in weak states with low capital mobility* STATE SECURITY FRAGMENTATION AND FRACTIOUS STATEHOOD** (N = 17) STATE SECURITY COHESION AND COERCIVE RENT-SEEKING*** (N = 15) NEITHER OUTCOME MANIFESTED (N= 11) Bangladesh Belarus Burkina Faso Burundi Bhutan Egypt Chad Chad Guinea-Bissau Ethiopia Equatorial Guinea Kenya Fmr Yugoslavia Eritrea Malawi Georgia Iran Mauritania Kyrgyzstan Iraq Nepal Lebanon North Korea Niger Lesotho Pakistan Rwanda Moldova Syria Solomon Islands Somalia Uzbekistan Sri Lanka Sudan Turkmenistan Tajikistan Zimbabwe Uganda Yemen * Total cases of contemporary coercion-intensive weak states were drawn from the 2008 Failed State Index ranking of the 60 or so weakest states. Then, cases with “lootable” wealth have been removed. See The Fund for Peace (2008) for full list; see Richard Snyder, “Does Lootable Wealth Breed Disorder? A Political Economy of Extraction Framework ,” Comparative Political Studies 39, 8 (October 2006), pp. 943–968. Along with Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, the specific cases examined in this chapter are in bold. ** These cases are from 1955–2002 (except for Kyrgyzstan, which I examine in this chapter ). Political Instability Task Force Report (2003). *** These cases are categorized in this column based on their cohesion and their use of repression. Based on reports by Freedom House, including Jennifer Dunham, Bret Nelson , Aili Piano, Arch Puddington, Tyler Roylance, and Eliza Young, eds., Worst of the Worst 2012: The World’s Most Repressive Societies (Washington, DC: Freedom House, 2012). 126 VERSO RUNNING HEAD 126 CHAPTER 6 of six cases, I ask whether some states’ combination of resources and patronage makes them better equipped to manage those crises, and whether other states’ particular combination fares much worse. As I describe below, Lebanon (1975), Somalia (1991), and Kyrgyzstan (2005 and 2010) experienced very different crises, yet in all three cases uneven resource distributions and limited access to patrons in many localities translated their crises into state security fragmentation (and state failure). Conversely, even resource distributions and local elites’ access to patrons...