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Somalia's protracted crisis of complete state collapse is unprecedented & has defied easy explanation. Disaggregating the Somali debacle into three distinct crises -- collapse of central government, protracted armed conflict, & lawlessness -- helps to produce more nuanced analysis. Significant changes have occurred in the nature & intensity of conflict & lawlessness in Somalia since the early 1990s, with conflicts becoming more localized & less bloody, & criminality more constrained by customary law & private security forces. These trends are linked to changing interests on the part of the political & economic elite, who now profit less from war & banditry & more from commerce & service business that require a predictable operating environment. The prolonged collapse of Somalia's central government cannot be explained as a reflection of local interests. The country's elite would profit greatly from the revival of a recognized but ineffective 'paper' state. The inability of Somalia's leaders to cobble together such a state is best explained as a product of risk aversion. Political & economic actors in collapsed states fear a change in the operating environment that, though far from ideal, is one in which they have learned to survive & profit. 32 References. Adapted from the source document.

Somalia's protracted crisis of complete state collapse is unprecedented and has defied easy explanation. Disaggregating the Somali debacle into three distinct crises – collapse of central government, protracted armed conflict, and lawlessness – helps to produce more nuanced analysis. Significant changes have occurred in the nature and intensity of conflict and lawlessness in Somalia since the early 1990s, with conflicts becoming more localized and less bloody, and criminality more constrained by customary law and private security forces. These trends are linked to changing interests on the part of the political and economic elite, who now profit less from war and banditry and more from commerce and service business that require a predictable operating environment. The prolonged collapse of Somalia's central government cannot be explained as a reflection of local interests. The country's elite would profit greatly from the revival of a recognized but ineffective 'paper' state. The inability of Somalia's leaders to cobble together such a state is best explained as a product of risk aversion. Political and economic actors in collapsed states fear a change in the operating environment which, though far from ideal, is one in which they have learned to survive and profit.

AFRICAN POLITICS IN THE NINETIES HAVE BEEN MARKED BY A SERIES OF VIOLENT BREAKDOWNS OF ORDER, AND IN SOME CASES THE DISAPPEARANCE OF THE CENTRAL STATE IN A LARGE NUMBER OF STATES. THIS ANALYSIS DOES NOT SEE WAR AS THE PROBLEM BUT IS INSTEAD CONCERNED WITH THE HISTORICAL CIRCUMSTANCES WITHIN WHICH ENDEMIC VIOLENCE OCCURS AND WHICH CAN BE SEEN AS POSSIBLE CAUSES OF THAT VIOLENCE. IT CONCLUDES THAT AS SPOILS SYSTEMS DEVELOP INTO TERMINAL SPOILS, SO VIOLENCE INTENSIFIES AND TAKES ON NEW BUT NECESSARY FORMS, AND A PROCESS OF STATE COLLAPSE BEGINS.

African politics in the nineties have been marked by a series of violent breakdowns of order, and in some cases the disappearance of the central state, in a large number of states. Attempts at the analysis of this phenomenon have involved several different but complementary approaches, notably those invoking globalisation, the economics of 'new' war, the crisis of the neopatrimonial state, or social and cultural factors as keys to explanation. These either confine themselves to case studies, or treat all instances of endemic violence as open to the same analysis, in part because they treat violence or warfare as themselves the central objects of analysis. An alternative approach does not see 'war' as the problem, but is instead concerned with the historical circumstances within which endemic violence occurs and which can be seen as possible causes of that violence.
This approach allows for the simultaneous existence of several different historical sequences involving war and violence, and identifies one key category of cases of endemic violence which covers the great majority of those cases in the nineties: violence associated with the process of state collapse in Africa. It attributes the origins of violence in these cases to the degeneration of their 'spoils politics' systems under the impact of their internal dynamics, accelerated by economic decline since 1980 and the end of the Cold War. As spoils systems develop into 'terminal spoils', so violence intensifies and takes on new but necessary forms, and a process of state collapse begins, interacting with the growth of violence in ways that accelerate both.

Rooted in agriculture, sedentism and population growth, ancient states were fragile and prone to collapse. There is an ongoing debate about the importance, nature and even existence of state-wide collapse. This book investigates why ancient states collapsed and examines to what extent inequality contributed to their downfall

Rooted in agriculture, sedentism and population growth, ancient states were fragile and prone to collapse. There is an ongoing debate about the importance, nature and even existence of state-wide collapse. This book investigates why ancient states collapsed and examines to what extent inequality contributed to their downfall