Review on New Development Strategies to “Fragile States” from the Point of Forming a New International Development Norm

Abstract

It is widely accepted that development, peace or stability requires an effective and legitimate state that is able to fulfill key international responsibilities and provide core political goods and services, including security. Actually, the International Community has increasingly engaged with so-called “Fragile States” and has recognized that “Fragile States” require sustained attention.

However, there is currently little agreement on either the definition or the criteria of “Fragile States” among scholars and international development agencies; there are some competitive terms such as “Failed States,” “Weak States,” and “Collapsed States,” which identify states that lack the capacity to discharge their normal functions as a state. Thus, this article aims to address this conceptual shortcoming and bring greater clarity to the discussion on fragility.

Many states failed and disappeared in the past, such as the Soviet Union or Rhodesia. However, in the modern world, states including “Fragile States” rarely disappear because the International Community supports their legal stability. In other words, the International Community has to struggle with “Fragile States” due to this legal stability. How, then, should the International Community conceptualize and implement responses to profound state fragility?

This paper applied the agency theory to examine the relationship between the government and the citizen within a fragile state. The nation can be seen as a principal that has inherent rights. On the other hand, the government is an agent that is a substitute to exercise the principal's rights by providing political goods.

The principal-agent problem arises easily when an agent (state) provides the principal (citizen) with political goods because it is inevitably under the condition of incomplete and asymmetrical information. When the state fails to provide political goods, the nation has to be provided by the sub-sector agent. This often causes a security problem within the state, which sometimes is confronted with the original agent of the state. Consequently, the International Community should help “Fragile States” to deliver political goods in order to avoid a security crisis, which spreads easily into neighboring countries.