External Interventions and State Fragility, Failure and Collapse: Comparative Analysis of African Experiences

Abstract

States fragility, failure and collapse are the results of both domestic and external determinant factors. This article provides a critique of the debates of failing states, failed states, and collapsed states in Africa by examining three cases: DRC, Burundi, and Somalia. It tries to highlight the impacts of external interventions on functionality, viability and sovereignty of African states. It presents the various interventions and their impacts on state viability in Africa. It argued that by taking similar paths of intervention with the same logic of the past, it is difficult to solve problems related to state failures in Africa. Instead, there has to be a different path of the statebuilding process that takes into account Africa's realities and the interest of the majority, not the interests of the elites and the donors. Besides, instead of focusing on the idea of the liberal peace theory of republicanism, cosmopolitanism, and a free-market economy, it is better to address state-society relations in Africa. Hence, Africa should import those devices and institutions that advance its interests. Moreover, it should be clear that the problems and their impacts are trans-boundary that need transnational cooperative and integrative responses. The rebuilding of a failed state and preventing sates from failure through both curative and preventive approaches have to be the concerns of the 21st-century global governance, peace, and security narratives.