School of Public Policy (SPP) Professor Yahya Sadowski presented his research about state formation and state decay during a faculty seminar at SPP on November 21.
Sadowski explained that although many states in the Arab world wield enormous coercive power, they have very little social influence. He noted, for example, that they have provided their citizens with fewer public services, such as public security, infrastructure, health, and education, in recent years than they once did. This led to widespread anger and frustration especially among peasants and members of the urban working class, many of whom turned to non-state actors for basic services. Sadowski said that this process of state decay was well under way when the events of the Arab Spring broke out in December 2010. "State decay contributed to the Arab Spring," he said, "and was also one of the primary effects."
Sadowski pointed to Libya, Yemen, and Syria as states that had failed or were failing today as a result of the Arab Spring. He noted that this was no surprise: military insurrections usually lead to an interruption of state services. He observed that he expected that recovery in these and other Arab states—if it happens at all—will take longer than it did in Germany and Japan after the end of World War II because the process of state decay was already well underway when any military actions occurred.
Sadowski said that what happened in the Middle East between 2000 and 2010 was similar to what happened in Africa during the 1980s, what he called the "Africanization of the Middle East." He explained that in both cases, a debt crisis forced countries to implement IMF-supervised austerity programs, which weakened existing state structures. This then led to waves civil wars during the 2000s, such as the 1994 Rwandan Genocide.
In concluding his presentation, Sadowski painted a bleak picture of the immediate future of the Middle East. "I know it looks bad now," he said, "but I expect it to be even more chaotic and violent for some time to come."