Noor Ul Shahbaz
One of the fundamental law of nature is the preservation of mankind. Everyone of us do have an inborn right to life, liberty and estate. Every man ought to endeavour to obtain peace as far as he has hope of obtaining it. This objective can better be achieved in association or in organisation with other men. We can not subject ourselves to the arbitrary power of another person the so called “sovereign”. We have surrendered all our rights to the community in general and not to any particular individual. As a result the community becomes sovereign and the protector of our rights. According to Rousseau while elaborating the theory of social contract, “since each gives himself up to all, he gives himself up to no one; and as there is acquired over every associate the same right that it given up himself, there is gained the equivalent of what is lost, with greater power to preserve what is left.” Law is expression of the general will, Sovereignty can never be alienated or represented or divided. The sovereign can be represented only by himself. The government is not the same thing as the sovereign. The government is not a party to the contract. The governmnet was created, first a law was passed by the sovereign (community) to the effect that there shall be a government and after that, the governors were appointed. Rousseau identifies sovereignty with the general will or the common interests of the community. That sovereignty is infallible, illimitable and unrepresentable.
The present time state is incapacitated and unable to function as per the aspirations of it’s subjects not because it has not the means to regulate the affairs but because it has lost the relevant public sanctity. It comes into power not as representing the general will but under the behest, dictation, aid and assistance of external forces. Those forces exercise their hegemony and thrust on the common masses the leaderships who are incapable to deliver. In contrast to it, in the legitimate society everybody is allowed to will his own will and thus the majority will is formed. When the majority will is found, those who did not will with the majority must say to themselves that they did not will the general will and hence must will what the majority will is. It is in this way that the majority will becomes the general will by the minority willing as the majority had willed. So, it is the general will that is the manifestation of sovereignty. So long as the laws are in common interest, they are expression of the general will which is the key of self-expression. The laws representing the general will can not be unjust because nobody is unjust to himself. One is free when he is obeying laws because laws merely reflect his own will. Those rules which does not represent his will, he will not follow or obey them – because they are not laws. Then if he is supressed to follow such rules – that determines he is not free. Thus a state is legitimate only when it is ruled by law not by the will of a particular sovereign or his party or any external force, otherwise it is bound to fail and what is law “it is expression of the general will.” There is no definite definition of a ‘failed state’ but we can examine, analyse the happenings, events and the functioning then reach at a conclusion.
The concept of state failure can be analysed through the codification of three “gaps”that the state is not able to address when it is in the process of failure, (1) capacity: when state institutions lack the ability to effectively deliver basic goods and services to its population;(2) security: when the state is unable to provide security to its population under the threat of armed groups or using abusive state power on it’s subjects (state terrorism); and (3) legitimacy: when a “significant portion of its political elites and society reject the rules regulating power, the accumulation and distribution of wealth.”
Further critique of the ways in which the ‘failed state’ concept has been understood and used to inform national and international policy decisions is brought forth in a research drawing on five case studies e.g, Afghanistan, Somalia, Liberia, Sudan, and the Niger Delta region of Nigeria — it is argued that “the use of the ‘failed state’ label is inherently political and based primarily on Western perceptions of Western security and interests”. Further it is suggested that Western policy-makers attribute the ‘failed’ label to those states in which ‘recession and informalisation of the state is perceived to be a threat to Western interests’. Furthermore, this suggests hypocrisy among Western policy-makers: the same forms of perceived dysfunction that lead to some states being labeled as failed are in turn met with apathy or are knowingly expedited in other states where such dysfunction is assessed to be beneficial to Western interests. In fact, “this feature of state functioning is not only accepted, but also to a certain degree facilitated, as it creates an enabling environment for business and international capital. These cases are not branded ‘failed states’”.
The concept of Nation-building” by developed countries plays an important role when we look on to it both positively and negatively. The question is raised that “can intervention work?” and concluded that “we can help nations build themselves” by putting an end to war and providing “well resourced humanitarian interventions”. The overconfidence of policymakers on nation-building is criticized by contrasting successful interventions in Bosnia (1995) and Kosovo (1999) with the failed attempt of nation-building in Iraq (2003) and Afghanistan (2001–2021) in which the U.S. lost thousands of lives over ten years and expended more than a trillion dollars without realizing its central objective of nation-building. When a so-called failed nation-state is crushed by internal violence or disruption, and consequently is no longer able to deliver positive political goods to its inhabitants, developed states feel the obligation to intervene and assist in rebuilding them. However, intervention is not always seen positively, but due to past intervention by for instance the US government, scholars [who?] argue that the concept of a failed state is an invented rationale to impose developed states’ interests on less powerful states.
The labeling of states like Somalia, Afghanistan, Liberia, or Sudan, as failed states, gives Western countries the legitimization to impose the western idea of a stable nation-state. It is commonly accepted that nation-building or international response to troubled/rogue states happens too late or too quickly which is due to inadequate analysis or lack of political will. Still, it is important to highlight that developed nations and their aid institutions have had a positive impact on many failed states. Nation-building is context-specific and thus a countries’ cultural-political, as well as social environment, needs to be carefully analyzed before intervening as a foreign state. The Western world has increasingly become concerned about failed states and sees them as threats to security. The concept of the failed state is thereafter often used to defend policy interventions by the West. Further, it is argued that, regarding the duration of international action by developed states and international organizations, a central problem is that a crisis tends to be focused on time, while the most essential work of reframing and building up a state and its institutions takes years or decades. Therefore, effective state-building is a slow process and it is disingenuous to suggest otherwise to the domestic public.
Noor Ul Shahbaz (M.A, LL.M GOLD MEDALIST),Guest Lecturer and former Acting Principal at Sopore Law College, can be reached at im1415151819@gmail.com
