The Lure of State Failure A Critique of State Failure Discourse in World Politics

This article critiques state failure discourses from a poststructural and postcolonial perspective. We argue that these discourses are wedded to Euro-Western notions of the state and that, therefore, they fail to articulate other modes of political community to which we seek to open world political...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inInterventions (London, England) Vol. 16; no. 6; pp. 877 - 897
Main Authors Figueroa Helland, Leonardo, Borg, Stefan
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Routledge 02.11.2014
Subjects
Discourse
Indexes
International Relations
Post-structuralism
Postcolonialism
Poststructuralism
Reification
State
State Failure
Violence
World Politics
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Summary:This article critiques state failure discourses from a poststructural and postcolonial perspective. We argue that these discourses are wedded to Euro-Western notions of the state and that, therefore, they fail to articulate other modes of political community to which we seek to open world political theory. First, we deconstruct prevalent state failure discourses to unearth the problematic character of their underlying commitments to a Eurocentric state. Second, we engage the way such discourses are deployed in the Failed States Index. Third, we propose an alternative account of why the Western model of the state has failed, explaining how the (neo)colonialist insistence on the propagation on this model enables the proliferation of violence conventionally attributed to state failure. Finally, we seek to open the notion of state failure to alternative forms of community obscured by the reification of the Western model of statecraft as the universal mode of political life.
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ISSN:1369-801X
1469-929X
1469-929X
DOI:10.1080/1369801X.2013.798140