Recent content by David Sogge

Angry citizens want their nations’ money back and rightfully so. Banks should be curbed instead of allowed to enthusiastically facilitate the illicit outflow of money by dictators.

Today’s political economy in Angola resembles the colonial order of yesterday: a narrow state-based elite manages the economy to promote a development model that redistributes wealth upward and outward.

In order for fragile states and the concept of state weakness to be properly understood, they need to be considered in the contexts of political economy and world history. Four apparently disparate cases – Guatemala, Haiti, Kosovo and Angola – show surprising similarities, and highlight common lessons for international state-building efforts.

When news arrives from faraway places of disaster, hunger and economic setbacks, our political figures and media usually start talking about how to mount a rescue with foreign aid. It’s the cowboy in the white hat. After all, some of the world’s most powerful institutions, notably the IMF and World Bank, lead the aid industry. It has a global budget of over 70 billion Euros a year and employs a global workforce of more than half a million. Its people rub elbows with diplomats, military commanders and influential pundits.

Under a variety of terms - weak states, fragile states, states in crisis, countries at risk of instability and low-income countries under pressure - the idea of state failure has become the subject of much attention.