Failed State Index Fails Sri Lanka
Kaushalya Ariyathilaka
Sri Lanka has slipped down to the 28th position in the 9th Failed States Index (FSI), published annually by Washington DC based The Fund for Peace andForeign Policy Magazine. Sri Lanka had the 29th position in the 2012 Index. This year’s drop owes to Sri Lanka’s poor performance in seven of the categories: Group Grievance, rise of Poverty and Economic Decline, Delegitimization of the state, Human Rights and Rule of Law, Fractionalized Elite and External Intervention.
Accordingly, Sri Lanka is in poor company, along with eighteen other countries including North Korea and Syria, and is designated to the “Alert” category. Sri Lanka’s South Asian neighbors have fared better than Sri Lanka in the Index, except for Afghanistan and Pakistan.
FSI ranking indicates how policymakers still find the ‘failed state’ concept to be important, despite being widely rejected by scholars. Policymakers find it convenient to have at least a rough empirical estimate at a global level to group countries into categories according to their performance as states. Supposedly FSI is to be a guideline for policymakers that are concerned about state failure; yet FSI fails insofar as it is applied for this purpose.
FSI attempts to measure 12 social, political and economic indicators from somewhat empirically measurable demographic pressure, human rights and external intervention to highly abstract and subjective measures such as group grievances and state legitimacy. Thus begins the manifold methodological flaws of the Index at its very conceptual level. While there is an lack of agreement over the very definition of state failure among the scholars, the Fund for Peace defines state failure as loss of physical control over territory or the monopoly on coercive forces; erosion of legitimate authority in making collective decisions; inability to provide public service; lack of international recognition as a state. Read More
