ABSTRACT
In a speech in London in early 2005, ‘Not Every Country in the World can be Democracy’, Professor John Gray of the London School of Economics, drew attention to the state of the world today, where there are an increasing number of broken, fragmented and corroded states.1 In much of Africa, Asia and the Balkans, he commented, there is nothing resembling a functioning modern state. Instead, there are failed or semi-failed states. Yet, this is not a new phenomenon. It has been known to the international community for a good many years now. A failed or collapsed state is not simply a state that is institutionally destabilized. This destabilization need not be by civil strife or guerrilla warfare. It can arise in other ways also. The World Bank in 19972 highlighted three distinguishing features of a collapsed state. These are: (1) ‘states that have lost (or failed to establish) legitimacy in the eyes of most of the population … and are therefore unable to exercise authority’; (2) ‘states that have been run into the ground by leaders and officials who are corrupt, negligent, incompetent, or all three’; (3) ‘states that have fragmented into Civil War, and in which no party is capable of re-establishing central authority’.3 State collapse, however, is a process. When does one determine that a state is in full collapse?
