Any debate about the root causes of fragility such as poor or inadequate gover-nance, conflict, poverty and inequality often come round to a discussion of the extent and direction of causality. Causality – the relationship between a set of factors (causes) and their direct (or even indirect) effect(s) – is the subject of much debate, because identifying what is a ‘root’ or original cause begs the question of how far back historically, or socially ‘deep’, one wishes to go in pursuit of what is the original cause in a complex chain of human, geographic and environmental systems. Equally, there is the question of direction – what drives and what is driven? Thus, the causation debate about fragility should be approached with a degree of caution and humility, and with the recognition that ‘root causes’ can be found in both internal (or endogenous) factors and external (or exogenous) factors that may affect the internal situation.18
As a first distinction, it is helpful to separate out largely external from internal considerations when considering the situation in African countries. For example,
regional and global power struggles have allowed numerous African governments to be protected from challenge or external interference facilitated the develop-ment of armed opposition groups during the cold war era. The result was a series of proxy wars. Other external drivers of internal fragility may originate from transnational crime and drug smuggling, conflict in neighbouring countries and subsequent refugee flows, and the ready availability of arms across porous borders. Although difficult to measure, account needs to taken of the impact of the diffusion of ideas and ideologies, and global ties to the broader international system through, for example, trade and a large diaspora community, which are particularly evident in the large Ethiopian and Nigerian communities resident in key Western countries, as well as the impact of the Somali diaspora on the conflict in that beleaguered country and its surrounding region. Various forms of transnational crime – drug trafficking in particular – can threaten political, economic and social development. In Guinea-Bissau, which is increasingly con-sidered to be Africa’s first ‘narco-state’, the drug trade has exacerbated political instability, including the double assassination of President Joao Bernardo Nino Vieira and Chief of Defence Staff General Batista Tagame Na Wai.19 Organised crime fosters corruption and violence, undermines the rule of law and good gover-nance, jeopardises economic growth, and poses potential public health risks.
Fragility is experienced locally and not necessarily nationally as such. For example, in areas experiencing fragility such as contemporary South Sudan, there are parts of the same country that may be reasonably secure and positioned well for a longer-term development-oriented approach, while in Nigeria, an apparently stable country, severe problems of substate fragility are evident in areas affected by Boko Haram attacks and the subsequent state-of-emergency counterinsurgency response by the government. Currently there is much debate about the challenges evident in a number of Africa’s cities, and evidence is mounting that the slums of Nairobi, Lagos, and elsewhere are a potential hotbed of city-level fragility and instability.
Social action theory holds that interactions among complex factors gain their own ‘logic’ over time, particularly if the nature of social interaction changes (such as from generally peaceful interaction to violence or extreme levels of social atomisation).20 Thus, repression may trigger a revolt, but once violence erupts, it gains momentum and features self-reinforcing dynamics (perhaps best illustrated by the continued turbulence in Egypt in 2012 and into 2013). The best efforts to address the political, social, and economic causes that gave rise to the
Arab Spring and re-establish peace and stability may be unsuccessful. Violence attracts new actors and leadership, forces of moderation are sidelined, and violence begets violence as a cycle of retribution is established at a time when peaceful norms of cohabitation have lost their immediate salience.
This view of the changing logic of social action goes beyond a differentiation between the need to establish short-term stability and then to proceed with reforms that address the root causes of instability. Not only do demands escalate and change over time, particularly amid times of new, uncharacteristic patterns of social interaction, but also efforts to respond to root causes sometimes appear to have little impact, partly because many of them require considerable time and investment. If the Tuareg revolt in northern Mali is really a result of decades of the political and economic marginalisation of northern Malians from the country’s political and economic largesse, it will probably take considerable effort, resources and time to reverse this situation – and even then the Tuaregs may now demand/desire more than greater attention or autonomy from Bamako.
This perspective presents conflict analysts (in particular) with a number of obvious dilemmas in identifying and responding to instability and associated fragility. How, indeed, does one build peace if efforts to respond to the root causes are unsuccessful? There is no scholarly consensus, for example, on the causal pathways linking climate-change-induced factors, such as desertification, and the outbreak of conflict in Sudan (Darfur) and more recently in Mali.21
Similar to causation in biological systems, causation in social systems is complex, often indirect, and there may also be ‘pushback’ as different factors interact with one another. Thus, improvements in economic growth rates – a prerequisite to building state capacity by providing increased tax and other revenues – may simultaneously increase inequality and hence reduce stability, offsetting any capacity gains. In this way there are often important feedback loops across the various dimensions, some of which may be counterintuitive. By adopting systemic causation it must be assumed that the ‘system often pushes back’ due to inertia, countervailing factors or other considerations. The IFs tool used here for forecasting is unique in this regard, given the comprehensive nature of the associated modelling that has been developed over several decades, the interrelationships among the hundreds of variables and the care taken in linking theory to forecast. Today the literature on the causes of fragility (particularly as informed by the analysis of the root causes of criminal and interpersonal violence, political violence, and civil war) has moved increasingly
toward an appreciation of the interaction among various types of root causes in historical and regional contexts.
Social and economic stress, accompanied by political tensions and weak governance capacity, leaves post-war countries highly vulnerable to renewed or recurrent violence. Often, too, new social tensions emerge in post-war contexts, such as increased criminality, parallel economies, youth violence, and gender-based and sexual violence.22 Countries such as South Africa and Liberia have seen upsurges in crime in post-conflict environments to include gender-based violence in the immediate post-war period. Violence can also emerge along ethnic or sectarian lines, e.g. in Nigeria’s fault lines of religious difference, along Nuer-Dinka lines in South Sudan, and more recently in Guinea-Bissau.