TY - JOUR
T1 - Measuring state fragility
T2 - a review of the theoretical groundings of existing approaches
AU - Ferreira, Ines
PY - 2017/6/3
Y1 - 2017/6/3
N2 - State fragility has become a resonant term in the development discourse over the past decade. In its early days it served as a catch-all phrase used by donor organisations to draw attention to the need to assist ‘fragile states’. In response to the call for a better understanding of how to deal with these countries, there was a surge in measures of fragility. However, it was not long before academics pointed to the murkiness and fuzziness of the term, and identified several caveats to most of the proposals for quantification. This paper reviews existing approaches to operationalise this concept, distinguishing between those that offer no ranking or only partial rankings of fragile states, and those providing ordinal lists of countries. The examination of their theoretical underpinnings lends support to the critical view that most existing approaches are undermined by a lack of solid theoretical foundations, which leads to confusion between causes, symptoms and outcomes of state fragility.
AB - State fragility has become a resonant term in the development discourse over the past decade. In its early days it served as a catch-all phrase used by donor organisations to draw attention to the need to assist ‘fragile states’. In response to the call for a better understanding of how to deal with these countries, there was a surge in measures of fragility. However, it was not long before academics pointed to the murkiness and fuzziness of the term, and identified several caveats to most of the proposals for quantification. This paper reviews existing approaches to operationalise this concept, distinguishing between those that offer no ranking or only partial rankings of fragile states, and those providing ordinal lists of countries. The examination of their theoretical underpinnings lends support to the critical view that most existing approaches are undermined by a lack of solid theoretical foundations, which leads to confusion between causes, symptoms and outcomes of state fragility.
KW - Faculty of Social Sciences
KW - Fragile states
KW - fragility
KW - measurement
KW - index
KW - ranking
U2 - 10.1080/01436597.2016.1257907
DO - 10.1080/01436597.2016.1257907
M3 - Journal article
SN - 0143-6597
VL - 38
SP - 1291
EP - 1309
JO - Third World Quarterly
JF - Third World Quarterly
IS - 6
ER -