Complex political emergencies and the state: Failure and the fate of the state

Quantitative Assessment of Political Fragility Indices and Food Prices as Indicators of Food Riots in Countries

“…As listed in Cament, Prest and Samy [1], state fragility has mainly been studied by students from the perspective of the state [5], international security [29], international relations [22], critical theory [30], conflict and inequality [31], democratisation [9,32], political economics [33] and development economics [4,34]. Environmental and resource access as causes of state fragility have been neglected from the recent literature.…”

Eroding Local Capacity: International Humanitarian Action in Africa

“…One important reason why humanitarian aid may actually exacerbate the conflict whose victims it is designed to assist, is that aid actors are ignorant about the origins and dynamic of the strife (African Rights, 1997). It is increasingly recognised that understanding the links between the political dynamic of a complex political emergency, on the one hand, and humanitarian aid interventions, on the other, is necessary to developing effective aid strategies and guidelines for conducting relief operations Cliffe and Luckham, 1999). Until now, few empirical studies have sought to document these linkages by analysing how humanitarian assistance figures in the political economy of the local conflict.…”

What Happens to the State in Conflict?: Political Analysis as a Tool for Planning Humanitarian Assistance

“…In a previous article (Cliffe and Luckham, 1999) we argued that CPEs often arise from failures of governance. But these failures in turn are symptoms of profound authority crises in contemporary nation-states, with global, national and local dimensions.…”

“…Moreover, oldfashioned international realpolitik is by no means dead, although it assumes multiple forms in a multipolar world. In addition, regional interventions by neighbouring countries have played an increasingly important role, both in triggering conflicts and in sustaining them afterwards, as in northern Uganda, Sierra Leone, the Horn of Africa (Cliffe, 1999) or Kashmir.…”

“…This article will strive to illustrate concretely how policy and practice can and do benefit from such an awareness of the political context. These insights are derived from the investigations carried out under the COPE programme, which was in turn premised upon our initial conceptual framework for 'analysing complex political emergencies and the state' (see Cliffe and Luckham, 1999). That framework has in turn been further elaborated and amended in the course of the research, and is also offered here in what is an improved (if abbreviated) form.…”