8.3: The Quest for Human Security in Insecure and Fragile States

In many if not most post-colonial states, individual security is neither guaranteed by the state nor by traditional mechanisms and individuals, and groups find themselves caught between tradition and modernity without conventions or institutions to guide appropriate economic, political or social behaviour with kin groups shouldering most responsibility for the care and security of members. The challenge facing analysts and policy makers, therefore, is how to think about this problem in non-dualistic ways so that the Weberian State does not trump traditional order or vice versa. In other words how can we think about this problem in a way that combines the strengths of both modern and customary systems in a new form of political organisation? The particular challenge of this is how to do this without wittingly or unwittingly reinforcing patrimonial/neo-patrimonial systems that are often corrupt and predatory.

Socio-cultural evolutionary theorists such as Ferdinand Toennies (1957), Max Weber (1949) and Talcott Parsons (1966), proposed that change processes are irresistible and universal. Modern evolutionary theory argues that societies move in a more or less linear direction from traditional to modern forms of economic, social and political forms of organization. In the process of evolution, state institutions become differentiated and acquire a measure of autonomy from traditional economic and social systems. In Max Weber’s view, the mark of a ‘developed’ state is that it has separate administrative, representative and executive capacities and has a ‘monopoly of coercive force’ so that it is able to control the territory under its sovereign jurisdiction. At minimum, states should be able to counter any resistance to legitimate authority and (more optimally) provide basic services in order to ‘win’ popular legitimacy. In this evolutionary process from traditional to modern, it is assumed that modernity will trump tradition. It will do so because market forces and industrialization will generate irresistible dynamics in favor of possessive individualism justified by ideologies or myths such as consumer sovereignty in the economy and citizen sovereignty in the polity. What evolutionary theory seems to have ignored, however, is the strength, resilience and persistence of custom and tradition both as a source of identity and as a means of organizing social, economic and political systems in a modern, globalised world system. Persistent and intractable conflicts in Africa, for example, often take place in post-colonial states where little or no effort has been made to attend to locality, customs or traditions with the result that political institutions sit uncomfortably in relation to traditional economic, social and religious orders. They are ineffective in terms of the delivery of services, lack any organic connection to locality and have difficulty ruling by persuasion. They thus tend to revert to colonial methods, dominating by divide and rule and by specific processes of inclusion and exclusion.

National and global capitalism, despite its dominance, has not succeeded in trumping all traditional economies and representative democratic institutions have not completely replaced customary or traditional rules and rulers. On the contrary there has been a ‘radical’ reassertion of tradition and the importance of a relatively undifferentiated approach to social, economic and political organization in a variety of high and low context cultures.^[3] This can be viewed both positively and negatively. The articulation of tradition and custom can generate a strong sense of continuity, trust, and order in complex social systems. Negatively, tradition can also be used as a justification for practices which are patrimonial, reactionary and unjust for groups such as women and youth. Custom is sometimes used to justify patriarchy and patterns of domestic violence, for example, and also to negate the positive contribution of youth in cultures which venerate age. The challenge confronting development specialists, policy makers and agents of change, therefore, is how to work with traditional ‘authority’ to reinforce its progressive role and to diminish its more negative influence. This is particularly important in relation to the role of the state in promoting human security. How can states do this without a deep acknowledgement of the long continuities that exist in every social system and without some effort to give these customs a place in new state formations or their reformation in the wake of conflict?