8.2: Enhancing State Resilience and Promoting Human Security

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The problem of how to build or rebuild state systems continues to challenge bilateral, regional and multilateral development agencies in most parts of the world. State systems should:

Do ‘justice’ to indigenous cultures
Facilitate high levels of ‘democratic’ participation
Ensure effective delivery of government services
Have high levels of grounded legitimacy.

Much insecurity is generated by political systems threatening indigenous peoples and marginalized groups, acting oppressively and corruptly and not having either the will or resources to deliver effective, capable and legitimate governance.

The dilemma is how ‘stable and well established democracies’ can work with less democratic regimes in order to build capable, effective, legitimate and relatively uncorrupt state institutions in situations of poverty, inequality, corruption and structural instability. Frank Fukuyama framed the problem as follows, “Can informal institutions embedded within social norms [or ‘hybrid institutions’] be made to work more effectively for development outcomes in the absence of a functioning Weberian state system?” ^[2]

It is probably more useful, for both analytical and policy purposes, to direct Fukuyama’s question to focus attention on whether new kinds of ‘hybrid’ political institutions can evolve that will combine the comparative advantages of both the classic Weberian system and traditional or customary institutions.

In most countries in Melanesia, Polynesia and Micronesia, for example, the modern OECD model of the state has not evolved as predicted and what state institutions exist are largely incapable of meeting the specific political, economic and social needs of different countries and cultures within the region. Similarly, customary and traditional forms of order have been challenged and in many cases severely undermined by colonial rule and market capitalism and have often been usurped by individuals and groups for specific partisan interest rather than the common good of a village, community or province.