http://www.cfr.org/publication/17638/fragility_instability_and_the_failure_of_states.html

Author:
Monty G. Marshall
Council on Foreign Relations Press

October 2008

28 pages

This Center for Preventive Action Working Paper surveys existing approaches to assessing state fragility and failure within the context of development, conflict, and governance. It examines the risk factors that have been identified through systematic inquiry and research with the goal of improving the prospects for successful conflict prevention and management, and argues that the goal of "early warning" relating to state fragility and failure should be more to inform and temper our expectations for policy response than to trigger costly and risky interventions.

" Peace-building capacity. The peace and conflict ledger combines seven indicators of general performance: four discrete indicators (self-determination, discrimination, regime type, and regime durability) with three composite indicators (human security, societal capacity, and neighborhood effects) into a single, additive measure of peace-building capacity. It was originally designed as a complement to predictive political risk models with the understanding that actual conflict outcomes are determined jointly by political risk factors and conflict management capabilities. The ledger includes a separate indicator denoting whether the country is currently experiencing, or recently ended, a serious armed conflict event. This measure has been abandoned in favor of the SFI (below).52 "

Conclusion: Incentive Structures and Sequential Dynamics in Societal Systems All ecosystems are exposed to gradual changes.... Nature is usually assumed to respond to gradual change in a smooth way. However... smooth change can be interrupted by sudden drastic switches to a contrasting state. Although diverse events can trigger such shifts, recent studies show that a loss of resilience usually paves the way for a switch to an alternative state. This suggests that strategies for sustainable management of such ecosystems should focus on [building and] maintaining resilience.... Stability domains typically depend on slowly changing variables....These factors may be predicted, monitored, and modified. In contrast, stochastic events that trigger state shifts are usually difficult to predict or control. 61