By Alexander Perepechko
Published on May 30, 2016
Weaknesses of two fragile states: Warning social and economic indicators for Belarus and Ukraine.
Recall that in the part 1 of this research I found multiple similarities in the political development of the Republic of Belarus and the interwar Eastern European countries. Created on ruins of dissolved empires, these rural countries experienced short periods of a democracy, and the triumphant agrarian populism, followed by dictatorship and a fragile state. I also outlined that agrarian populism in this part of the world has two tactical impasses. Firstly, Populism cannot benefit from the simultaneous victory of an agrarian party (movement, group, or corporation) and the rise of a democratic political regime because liberal capitalism can easily destroy peasants as a class. Secondly, economic strains and crises in this part of the world leave little chance to put into action programs based upon rural populist ideals of comprehensive social transformation. I inferred that similarities between the Republic of Belarus and the interwar Eastern European countries lead to a similar four-stage political path: democratization, rise of peasant Populism, dictatorship, and a fragile state. Yet, we still need to find out how the last stage might look for Belarus…
A weak state, a failed state, a collapsed state, and a recovered (reanimated) state are specific concepts reflecting different stages of a fragile state (Carment, Langlois-Bertrand, Samy, 2016; Rotberg, 2003). Fragile states are on the brink of collapse in at least one of three areas: 1) authority over territory and the populace, 2) capacity of the economy and resource mobilization, and 3) effective and responsive governance (see Carment & Samy, 2014; Jenne, 2003). In other words, the state fails because it is seized with internal violence and cannot deliver positive political goods to the population.
Weak states include a wide range of states that are a) inherently weak because of fundamental limitations pertaining to geography, resources, or economy; b) basically strong but temporarily or situationally weak due to internal active hostilities or opposition, mistakes of decision making, despotism and greed, or external intervention; or c) a combination of a) and b) (Rotberg, 2003).
Weak states usually harbor inter-communal tensions – regional, ethnic, religious, linguistic, and other cleavages. Tensions are seething below the surface but have not become overtly violent yet. Foreign powers often try to destabilize a weak state and to promote low intensity conflict (LIC). LIC frequently begins with the formation of active insurgent cells and passive support networks – violent non-state actors (see Searle, 2008) – in a weak state…
In a weak state, physical infrastructure networks deteriorate and hospitals and schools outside the capital and the largest cities show indications of underfunding. Crucially, GDP and other economic indicators are falling, corruption is escalating, and authorities and citizens increasingly pay only lip service to the rule of law and constitution. Harassment of civil society becomes a routine practice by the authorities. The flow of illicit funds into overseas and offshore accounts increases very much and forecasts serious trouble.
Failed states are on the edge, deeply conflicted, dangerous and in turmoil due to battling factions. The key indicator of a failed state is the transformation of communal antagonisms – regional, ethnic, religious, linguistic – into enduring cross-group violence or civil war (Rotberg, 2003). Needless to say, these groups have territorial and social characteristics and therefore are socio-territorial actors. Rival communities often fight to control natural resources like oil and other raw materials, diamond fields, or timber. Government troops and security forces usually fight armed insurgents but cannot control state borders and some territories. Civilian combat deaths increase. Terrorism, guerrilla warfare, and even mobile warfare plunge the country into a state of chaos. Unfriendly foreign powers openly support the insurgents and the level of violence can approach conventional warfare. As a result, security is removed from the population. The infrastructure falls apart. Some schools are closed. Epidemics overwhelm health facilities. Incomes and living standards quickly decrease and national statistical agencies hide or falsify socio-economic data. The ruler loses legitimacy. To run a country a dictator routinely uses the police, military, and security apparatus. Corrupt ruling elites impose “rent” and engineer fees and taxes on all existing (and even non-existing) activities. Citizens stop trusting the state. In search of security and economic opportunity, they increasingly turn to non-state actors – community organizations, criminal gangs, warlords, arms and drug dealers – which become the suppliers of political goods.
An extreme version of a failed state is a collapsed state, when political goods are obtained only through private or ad hoc means (Rotberg, 2003). State authority does not exist in a collapsed state. The citizens are not, in fact, citizens any longer but habitants, who team up based on regional, ethnic, religious, or language affinity, or are confined by borders. In this situation, some community leaders, warlords, criminal bosses, and arms and drug kingpins turn into new proto-state actors and take control over territories within what used to be the state. New quasi-states might emerge…
Recall from part 1 of this research essay that right before the beginning of World War II (September 1, 1939), Eastern Europe consisted of agrarian countries with authoritarian regimes. In the interwar period (1918-1939), these countries followed a similar political path: democratization – rise of peasant populism – dictatorship – fragile state. Just before the Second World War, all were weak states.
Czechoslovakia collapsed first. In 1938, it split and the Czech part was annexed by Germany. During World War II more eastern European countries collapsed. Poland split and was divided between Germany and the Soviet Union: the Soviets annexed West Belarus and West Ukraine (Kresy – Poland’s eastern borderlands). Yugoslavia also was split: Italy annexed Slovenia and occupied Montenegro; Germany occupied Serbia. Albania was annexed and Greece was occupied by Italy. Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania were annexed by the Soviet Union. The remained countries of Eastern Europe – Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, and Croatia – became failed states. Although they were allies of the Axis powers, the political regimes in these 5 countries could not entirely control their territories and borders because of significant insurgent movements – violent resistance directed against the Nazis or/and Soviets…
The categories of a fragile state – weak, failed, and collapsed – are not static and final but fluid. Even an inherently weak state (e.g., a landlocked state, surrounded by unfriendly neighbors, or a state poor in mineral resources) is not doomed to stay in this category forever. With time hostile neighbors might turn into friends and solar or wind energy might solve the main economic problems of an inherently weak state. From weakness a state can move back to strength and become a strong state, controlling its territories and borders and delivering a full array and high quality of political goods to its citizens. And vice versa, a state can move from being strong to become weak, failed, or collapsed.
Are there any signs of a weak, failed, or collapsed state in recent Belarus? To measure the fragility of the Belarusian state, the following data and research methods are used.
The Fragile States Index highlights pressures experienced by all states. Importantly, this index helps to detect the time when these pressures push a state towards failure (Cast Conflict, 2014; Messner, 2015). The Fund for Peace (FFP) generates this index for each country every year. The Fragile States Index is often called the Fund for Peace Index (hereafter, FFP Index, or Index). The FFP Index measures state fragility based on a total score that summarizes numerous indicators and expresses pressures (conditions) for all countries. The higher the score and FFP Index, the worse the conditions in the country.
A country’s total score and even year-by-year trend can sometimes be misleading. Worsening conditions in some indicators can be masked by improving conditions in others. A disaggregation of the Index to its composite indicators tells a more nuanced story. What are these composite indicators?
The Index is based on the FFP’s proprietary Conflict Assessment System Tool (CAST) analytical platform, developed to assess the vulnerability of states to collapse. Data from multiple public sources is triangulated and subjected to critical review to obtain final scores. Millions of documents from 11,000 sources worldwide are analyzed every year. By applying specialized search parameters, scores are apportioned for every country. These scores are based on 12 key indicators: social (demographic pressures, refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs), group grievances, and human flight and brain drain), economic (uneven economic development and poverty and economic decline), and political and military (state legitimacy, public services, human rights and rule of law, security apparatus, factionalized elites, and external intervention).
Through integration and triangulation techniques, the CAST platform separates relevant data from the irrelevant. Guided by the 12 primary social, economic, and political and military indicators, a content analysis is performed by using specialized search terms. Results are converted into a score representing the significance of each of the various pressures for a given country.
The content analysis is further juxtaposed against two other key aspects of the overall assessment: quantitative analysis and qualitative inputs based on major events in the country. This “mixed methods” approach also helps to ensure that inherent weaknesses, gaps, and biases in one source are checked by others.
Each indicator is rated on a scale of 1 to 10 with 1 (low) being the most stable and 10 (high) being the most at risk of collapse and violence. To estimate the risk of collapse and violence for a state, 5 categories are established: 0-2 is “excellent,” 2-4 “good,” 4-6 “moderate,” 6-8 “weak,” and 8-10 “poor.” To better understand what is going on with Belarus we will compare it with the data for Ukraine, a kin country located in the same macro-region in which tensions between the Russian Federation and the West increasingly intensify.
In 2015, pressure assessments were made for 178 countries. With a fragile state total score of 75.6, Belarus had an FFP Index of 87. Ukraine had a fragile state total score of 76.3 and FFP Index of 84 (Figure 23). Both states were assigned to the group marked as “warning.” During 2006-2015, Belarus demonstrated strong improvement, while Ukraine worsened. In Belarus, improvement slowed after 2010 and started to worsen in 2014. Interestingly, Ukraine experienced a similar trend: improvement was interrupted in 2010 and the trend worsened dramatically in 2014. Decade-long trends in fragile state total scores (and the FFP Index) suggest the convergence of the situation in Belarus and Ukraine during the last 5 years. It is known that problems in failed states can be exported to their neighbors. In most cases, economic decline and physical insecurity cannot easily be isolated (see Kraxberger, 2012: 29-48).
Figure 23. Measuring Fragile States: Total Scores for Belarus and Ukraine, 2006-2015. (Source: FFP data at http://fsi.fundforpeace.org/rankings-2015)
Among social indicators, “group grievance” in Belarus and Ukraine consistently stays in the “weak” category (6-8) (Figure 24). This indicator reflects discrimination and ethnic, religious, and other kinds of violence between socio-territorial groups. According to the Minority Rights Group (2015), the risk of genocide and mass killing in Belarus and Ukraine may be on an increasing trend (People, 2015). These assessments are based on known antecedents of genocide and mass political killing. In Belarus, the community at greatest risk is Poles. In Ukraine, Tatars, Krymchaks, and Karaites in Crimea and also Russians, Hungarians, and Moldovans are under threat. Because of Russia’s intervention, the “group grievance” indicator in Ukraine shows strong worsening since 2013.
Figure 24. Measuring Fragile States: Social Indicators in Belarus and Ukraine, 2006-2015. (Source: Generated by the author based on FFP data at http://fsi.fundforpeace.org/rankings-2015)
Even though the indicators of “demographic pressure” (such as disease, natural disaster, pollution, malnutrition, mortality) and “refugees and IDPs” (e.g., IDP and refugee camps) in both countries improved during the last decade, there are recent signs that these factors have grown worse. For instance, healthcare and radioactive waste management in areas contaminated as a result of the Chernobyl disaster demonstrate worsening because the Belarusian and Ukrainian governments have less and less money for these programs.
Perhaps the values of the “human flight” indicator (human capital, emigration of educated citizens) assigned to Belarus by the Fund for Peace are too optimistic. Some observers (e.g., Yeliseev, 2013) argue that from 1990 to 2010 the gross migration in Belarus was negative and equaled about 131,000 people. What is more, Belarusian emigrants were younger and more educated than immigrants who moved to Belarus. If this is true, the brain drain problem in Belarus is appalling.
Pressures associated with population displacement (“refugees and IDPs”) are becoming worse. As the situation in occupied Crimea and eastern Ukraine has continued to deteriorate, large numbers of people have left those regions in search of safety. The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies estimated that almost 2.2 million people have been displaced in total. There are now over 1.3 million IDPs in Ukraine. Also, many took refuge in Belarus and other neighboring countries (In pictures, 2016; Zagorets, 2014).
In Belarus, economic indicators (Figure 25) clearly reflect policies of agrarian Populism: “uneven development” strongly improves while “poverty and economic decline” does not change much and remains “weak” (6-8). In the absence of economic freedom (Belarus belongs to the group of countries with repressed economic freedom (2016 Index, 2016)), Populist ideals, instincts, and the “manual control” practices of Lukashenko and his agrarian clique lead to the situation where more citizens become equal because they become poor.
Indeed, the policy of equality between town and county in the spending of public revenue lead to self-sufficiency in agricultural production. But this agricultural autarky was achieved due to huge agriculture subsidies. The subsidies barely helped to make Belarusian agricultural production competitive on the international market. For example, of Belarusian exports, cheese accounts for 2.2%, concentrated milk 1.9%, and beef 1.1% (Belarus, n.d.). Other agricultural products play an even smaller role in Belarusian exports… The policy of agricultural Populism is an obstacle to structural change and technical innovation in a country of limited economic diversification. Lukashenko is not going to change this policy: rural, especially eastern Belarusian, peasants and rurbanites in cities are the core of his support. Liberal capitalist reforms will wipe out his strongholds and will end the era of rural Populism in Belarus.
Figure 25. Measuring Fragile States: Economic Indicators in Belarus and Ukraine, 2006-2015. (Source: Generated by the author based on FFP data at http://fsi.fundforpeace.org/rankings-2015)
The economic crisis of 2011 and the more recent economic crisis in Belarus, engendered by the end of low prices for Russian oil and natural gas, have hammered the last nail in Populism’s coffin. Agrarian Populist dreams of social justice, equality, and a perfect state are over… According to the World Bank analytical grouping (New Country, 2015), Belarus belongs to countries with upper-middle-income economies. However, incomes and living standards in Belarus are rapidly declining: the gross national income (GNI) per capita decreased from 8029 American dollars in 2014 to 6030 in 2015 (Belarus – GDP, n.d.). The country is sliding toward a low-middle-income economy (1045 to 4125 American dollars). Observers have estimated that every year the Belarusian economy loses about 2 billion American dollars as a result of bribes and other “rent” extractions (see Volchek, 2016). The flow of illicit funds into overseas and offshore accounts is dramatically increasing and signifies serious trouble (Offshore, 2016; Oligarkhov, 2016)…
Compared to Belarus, the economic indicator of “uneven development” in Ukraine improved much less while the indicator of “poverty and economic decline” fluctuated in response to market dynamics.
We will continue this discussion it in my next essay.
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