Now that We Have Your Attention: The Failed States Index as a Policy Tool to Improve Human Security
*This is a joint post with Nate Haken, Senior Associate at the Fund for Peace
The publication of the Failed States Index (FSI) each year leads to a flurry of discussion and debate in national media outlets and blogs all over the world. This year, its reception in Indonesia has caught our attention. At first, as frequently happens, the politicians disagreed with our findings and even publicly questioned our intentions and qualifications. But then they started actually debating the scores as did journalists and average citizens. The politicians spoke about the strong economy (which doesn't get as much weighting on our Index as many would like). Some in the public expressed frustration with corruption and with the distribution of public services. Others pointed out that over the years, there has been progress made on many of the indicators and called on the government to continue to make improvements.
And that's what the Failed States Index allows. The application of a common framework and robust methodology allows for the measurement of changes on the ground over time, and facilitates a conversation about where things are improving, where things seem to be deteriorating, and what needs to be done to keep a country from slipping into conflict.
Granted, indices implicitly assume an unrealistic level of generalizability in the world. In the case of the FSI, we assume that social, economic, and political pressures come together as symptoms of instability in roughly the same way in every country every time. We recognize that this paints a complex picture with a very broad brush. But sometimes a broad brush can be useful.
Different agencies and sectors have specialized disciplines, tools, and metrics. The problem of state failure, however, is bigger than that. There are cross-cutting issues of governance, economy, public services, atomization of the polity, security, brain drain, and sovereignty. Addressing the root problems requires the engagement of civil society, security forces, development experts, political leadership, and others. Living in silos can be dangerous—depending on the situation. What makes sense for the economy alone, or from a security perspective alone, can sometimes undermine political stability. There are conflicting short term, medium term, and long term considerations and imperatives. The parts are always moving, some faster than others.
With so many challenges to juggle, an index like the FSI helps keep track of them all. As David Rothkopf put it, “(The FSI) is an important barometer of governance and stability, and though it could not hope to offer the last word on an issue as complex as state failure, it succeeds because every year it triggers a vigorous debate about places that usually get too little attention in the halls of power -- but often come back to haunt us all later."
Because the issue of state fragility and state failure is more complex than any index, we expect people on the ground to question the scores and delve more deeply into the numbers.
In Indonesia, we read of politicians asking civil society to join with them to understand the challenges and work together to improve the country. We hope this call to collaboration is genuine and will be accepted. This epitomizes our ultimate goal—the use of the FSI as a tool on the ground around which to consider priorities, discuss responsibilities, and monitor progress, such that it becomes a part of positive change contributing to increased human security worldwide.
Comment #1
According to the Guardian's recent blog on the FSI, they stated that:
"Failed means a binary division between those countries that are salvageable and those beyond redemption. It is a word reserved for marriages and exams. It does not belong in a pragmatic debate."
Do you see any issues in the use of the term failed? Has there been any attempt to calculate or mitigate any negative impacts these distinctions might have on the states they are used to describe? How can the index impact these states positively?
Comment #2
Thank you for your comment. Even we at the Fund for Peace have an issue with the use of the term "failed" and agree that its binary nature is at odds with reality: that there exists a continuum of both pressures and capacities. That was one of the things we hoped to convey with our blog post.
There is another reality, though, that is also important. Complex analysis is often ignored, at least initially, by those people whose attention we need to capture.
For many years, the Fund for Peace has been working on in-depth assessments of countries based on work on the ground and by convening local experts. We write papers based on painstaking research and analysis and try to get the international community to pay attention to the fact that so many human beings are living in countries or areas of countries where their governments will not or cannot protect them – the main function of a government. Right after 9/11, the international community became interested in places where there were even pockets of the symptoms of state failure that allow terrorist camps to exist, among many other things. But even this attention did not last very long.
So, the Failed States Index (FSI) was our way of getting the discussion back into the public domain. It is, as many point out, simplistic: We are representing an entire year’s events for entire countries, when we recognize that the world is dynamic and that countries can differ greatly from one city to the next or one province to the next.
Most of the analysis and critiques we read about the FSI demonstrate that it does its job – it gets attention and gets people talking. But no one in a decision making position should use a single index produced annually on a global scale to make decisions that could impact a country. What they should do, and many do, is question the findings of the index and its indicators, consider it in the context of the environment, discuss its merits and perhaps identify global trends.
We've also been contacted by some governments who want to discuss not only how they can improve their scores but how we might be able to help support that. So, for all the negative criticism, there is a lot of positive reaction to the FSI and we hope to continue to build on those and use these opportunities to start improving the scores!
We should all remember that indices are themselves not policy-making tools. But they can be a starting point, and recognizing and understanding the trends that indices help us identify is important. Such indices can give attention to countries that may be neglected by the international community because they are too difficult and far away. But that does not mean that those countries and the people that live in them don’t matter. If we had called it the “Social, Economic and Political Pressures Index,” no one would be debating the very issues we wanted to highlight in countries that need their citizens to be holding their governments to account and need the support of the international community.
Comment #3
Some really interesting points guys.