The Explanation of State Failure According to Robert Bates
State failure is the topic of great current interest in scientific research of politics. The modern political studies are tightly connected with many fields of scientific inquiry: history, economy, sociology and many others. In order to understand the political process, it is necessary to also fully understand the context of specific historical realities and socioeconomic trends which had place at certain moment. Understanding the essence and principle of how states fail requires applying the knowledge in a pictured way as not only purely political factors are involved in this. In his works Robert Bates has presented the definition and a detailed description of the phenomena of state failure. Hereafter, this concepts shall be reviewed in detail and researched, presenting its content and reviewing the most important factors contributing to the existence of phenomenon.
The brief definition of state failure refers to the implosion of state, which means that state has lost its ability to maintain monopoly over the means of force (Bates, Robert H., 1-12, 2008b). Implosion of the state is accompanied by occurrence of two processes. The first process is the transformation of the state into an instrument of predation. Predation here stands for increase in financial pressure politicians and government institutions deal on the population of the country in order to levy more resources from people. Naturally, the ruling elites accumulate more and more wealth while the majority of the country gets poorer. As population continues to peter out, government begins to feel in need to apply more power to continue the increased levying. To do so, state begins to use its military power not to defend the population but to force it to pay and give more. The second process begins when political struggle in the country starts to include arms. As political forces who are involved in the struggle are militarized, this means that state is no longer the only player on the political arena who owns the weapon power. This means that state has lost the monopoly over force. In this way, as arms are used as the means of political struggle for power, they no longer can be deployed to protect the population from the potential threats from outside or even from within the country. When citizens and entrepreneurs are left without protection and are burdened with heavier taxation instead, the country’s economy inevitably suffers. Poverty of population leads to population’s inability to pay more taxes and stick to new regulations to support state, which in the end loses its funding and the country collapses into the collection of regions, governed by militarized parties, fighting with each other to gain control over others. If any state structures or figures are left until this moment, they
It is important to distinct state failure from such phenomena as revolution and civil war. Both state failure and revolution include political violence as their essential component. Revolutions include the transformation of state’s class and social structures (Skocpol, Theda, 4). Even …
