The afterlives of state failure: echoes and aftermaths of colonialism
| Published date | 01 June 2024 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/13540661231215582 |
| Author | Nicolas Lemay-Hébert,Ari Jerrems |
| Date | 01 June 2024 |
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JR
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https://doi.org/10.1177/13540661231215582
European Journal of
International Relations
2024, Vol. 30(2) 255 –279
© The Author(s) 2023
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DOI: 10.1177/13540661231215582
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The afterlives of state failure:
echoes and aftermaths of
colonialism
Nicolas Lemay-Hébert
Australian National University, Australia
Ari Jerrems
Australian National University, Australia; University of Western Australia, Australia
Abstract
This article offers a new perspective on the failed states agenda, and the reconfiguration
of colonial discourse buttressing it, by theorising its afterlives. The concept of afterlives
has mostly been discussed as a metaphor or in passing in the IR literature. Drawing from
the post- and decolonial literature, we propose to define the concept simultaneously as
echoes and aftermaths of the past. This conceptualisation of afterlives aims to contribute
to the study of the persistence of colonial forms beyond notions of continuity and
rupture. We develop the concept of afterlives through a discussion of the failed states
agenda and its iterations. We discuss four specific iterations of the agenda: the genesis
of the agenda in the decolonisation period; the consolidation of the agenda during
the early 1990s; the crisis of the agenda and the rise of the resilience discussion; and
finally the rise of the fragile city agenda as one of the afterlives of the failed states
agenda. To illustrate our argument, we discuss two specific ‘fragments’ through which
we can effectively grasp the echoes and aftermaths of coloniality: the pathologisation
of fragile states and cities, operated through various twin figures (civilised/barbaric;
strong/dysfunctional; resilient/vulnerable) and their practical repercussions; and the
visualisation, mapping and colour-coding of fragile states and cities, exemplifying the
durability and contradictions of the failed states agenda.
Corresponding author:
Nicolas Lemay-Hébert, Australian National University, Hedley Bull Building, 130 Garran Road, Canberra,
ACT 2601, Australia.
Email: nicolas.lemay-hebert@anu.edu.au
1215582EJT0010.1177/13540661231215582European Journal of International RelationsLemay-Hébert and Jerrems
research-article2023
Original Article
256 European Journal of International Relations 30(2)
Keywords
Failed state, quasi-state, post-colonialism, international relations, pathologisation,
fragile cities
‘You want me to tell you about myself as if I have a complete story but all I have are fragments
which are snagged by troubling gaps, things I would have asked about if I could, moments that
ended too soon or were inconclusive’.
(Gurnah, 2021: 206)
Introduction
The concept of state failure and its multiple iterations (Grimm et al., 2014; Gros, 1996)1
is still alive and well, despite multiple prognoses of its imminent demise. After a heyday
in the 1990s and early 2000s, a coalition of scholars have noted that the concept has lost
any utility and should be abandoned altogether, both from a political realist standpoint
(Mazarr, 2014) or from more critical perspectives (Call, 2008; Gruffydd Jones, 2013;
Hill, 2005; Nay, 2013). Faced with the ‘failure of the failed states debate’ (Hagmann and
Hoehne, 2009), or confronted with a ‘failed paradigm’ (Hameiri, 2007), some note that
the concepts of fragile and failed states are ‘on the wane’, ‘destined to be replaced in the
future’ (Nay, 2013: 338; see also Ezrow and Frantz, 2013: 1335; Mazarr, 2014). Because
of all its shortcomings, the notion of state failure ‘should be dispensed with as a theoreti-
cal concept’ (Eriksen, 2011: 235), or ‘rejected’ (Gruffydd Jones, 2013: 186). However,
concepts, norms or ideas do not die easily (see, for instance, Percy and Sandholtz, 2022;
Quiggin, 2010). To the contrary, a concept like state failure is politically malleable, use-
ful to powerful actors as a prescriptive term justifying interventionary practices (Bilgin
and Morton, 2002: 66; Bøås and Jennings, 2005; Clausen and Albrecht, 2022; Lemay-
Hébert, 2019). Despite the critique, the agenda has persevered, outliving its fatal
prognostics.
In this article, we interrogate the persistence and durability, as well as contradictions,
of particular assumptions underpinning the failed states agenda. The failed states agenda
refers here to a distinct body of literature presenting a specific set of arguments about
failed states (for similar approaches, see Hill, 2005; Rocha de Siqueira, 2022; Stepputat
and Engberg-Pedersen, 2008; Woodward, 2017), connecting theory and practice through
an epistemic community of practice (Lemay-Hébert and Mathieu, 2014).2 As captured by
Klaus Schlichte, ‘think tanks and organic intellectuals – in the Gramscian sense of the
word – have produced a new discourse that simultaneously dominates the academic
thinking on policies within the OECD and accompanies new forms of interventions’
(Schlichte, 2005: viii). We unpack the various iterations of the failed states agenda by
developing a theoretical framework around the concept of afterlives. The notion of after-
lives has received increased attention in recent International Relations (IR) scholarship
(e.g. Odysseos, 2019), drawing on a burgeoning body of work in cognate disciplines,
particularly from post- and decolonial perspectives (Salem, 2020). This scholarship has
made a number of crucial contributions, underlining the persisting impacts of imperial,
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