Transitional and Failed Societies: What Are They?

This piece comments on some segments of Community Policing: National and International Models and Approaches by Mike Brogden & Preeti Nijar (2005).

States undergoing some kind of transformation are usually the sites of international criminal justice, which are supposed to settle scores with the past and provide a stable basis for the development of a (capitalist) democratic society. Although this is my starting point for this essay, it is worth pointing out that Brogden and Nijar are looking at similar states but more from the perspective of developing a critique of community policing models which are being ‘exported’ there by the advanced capitalist countries (particularly the USA and Britain).
Of the countries that Brogden and Nijar study, they seek to divide them into three groups those which developed community policing themselves (Mostly western advanced capitalist countries but some Asian countries are included in this category – namely Singapore, Japan and China), transitional states and failed states. I wish to examine these categories to determine their usefulness beyond this particular instance.

Transitional states are those which have usually gone through some international criminal justice ‘cleansing’ of the past (either a Truth Commission or International Criminal Court/Tribunal). They usually (but not always) have had some kind of dictatorial government and are in the process of attempting to build institutions of bourgeois democracy. Examples of these countries include such places as South Africa and Chile in the early 1990’s for example. For me a key ingredient of being a ‘transitional’ state rather than a ‘failed’ one is that the state remains intact – it is merely modified or purged of a few elements.

Brogden and Nijar state that “‘Failed’ societies… are essentially states in which the primary reason for transformation is due to the collapse of structures of political governance… (which) have been disappearing into a void.” (pg.189-190) However, they later go on to state “In this text, the term ‘failed society’ is intended to encompass those societies of the previous Soviet system which straddle a chasm between the disappearance of their command economies and the chaotic onrush of a free market system.”(pg.190)
There are two points I wish to make in relation to this, both related to each other. Firstly, that the term failed society is a poor one really – much better would be collapsed or even better disintegrated society. Secondly, surely societies where there has been a collapse of the ruling bodies into a void range further than just post-Stalinist countries. For example, what about Iraq and Afghanistan over the last few years – surely they are prime examples of power vacuums? I’m sure there are further examples that could be utilised here too.

But before I conclude, I wish to return to the notion of transitional states. In them there is a key question which I have asked in relation to them which is what are these states a transition from and to what. In there case they are transitions from a dictatorial/fascist regime to a capitalist democracy. But there are other types of transitions – in particular for us the question of dual power where the transition to a workers state is posed. The problem with the examples used in the book is they look at transformation from one form of capitalism to another or from non-capitalism to capitalism, but never with any state that is going into a non-capitalist form (whether from capitalism or not). How can such a schema be of use to us when it has such flaws?

Human Rights and International Justice

Yesterday I did a presentation on International Justice in relationship to the Pinochet Dictatorship in Chile, this piece is based on some of the material I discussed in that presentation. This area is, in my opinion, very poorly conceptualized and makes lots of unfounded assumptions, I apologise in advance if any of these have creeped into this piece, and would welcome anyone pointing out any if they spot them.

Putting an end to abuses of human rights is something that most people say they would strive for. The response to mass human rights violations in most cases (this is in most cases where there is one!) is some form of international justice. International justice in these cases can be split into two distinct camps in these cases. Firstly there are International Criminal Tribunals (or the now existing International Criminal Court) and secondly there are Truth Commissions. I’ll describe and discuss each in turn then criticise them both.

International Criminal Tribunals are based on the good old fashioned, cost-benefit, rational choice theories. Thus they aim to punish those who have offended against human rights to restore the universal balance. This is also supposed to deter other world elites from copying them too. However, for me this whole method is based on the idea that the tops of society have absolute control over those below them and manipulate them completely. Now of course, to a certain extent this could be the case, but it’s a far too simplistic understanding of society.
Furthermore, tribunals take an awful lot of time, and very few people end up getting tried by them. Similarly, a lot of the time the courts fail to hold people to account, Pinochet is a good example of this, but what about today’s great warmongers Bush and Blair.

Truth Commissions are all about healing and reconciliation through providing an accurate account of the human rights violations that happened over a period of time. They don’t have prosecutorial powers usually, unlike a the Tribunals, and have more recently been used in conjunction with prosecution of the leading figures in carrying out the human rights abuses. They are also often vested with producing suggestions of how such events can be prevented in future.
However, most Truth Commissions are set-up in a transitional period usually between the regime that carried out the abuses and an incoming ‘democratic’ government. This usually means some sort of compromise on the limits and extent of such a commission.

However, in my opinion there are two great flaws with these methods. Firstly, these methods look at these in a limited national conception, the only perpetrators according to these are those within the national country. Secondly, both methods don’t get to the root causes of these situations, the brutal conditions that people are forced to live in around most of the world.

This is just a short piece on this, but for myself one thing however is clear. In a globalised capitalist world, international justice is only possible if it doesn’t interfere seriously with imperialist aims.

Political Economy & Penal Policy: A Comparative Approach

As I have stated before, as a Marxist, I believe crime and the operation of the criminal justice system depend upon to a large extent upon the economical development of society. Certain crimes are impossible under certain economic situations (ie theft (from a shop) and communism) and certain modes of dealing with crime fit better under certain economic systems (imagine cognitive therapy under a slave based or feudal society).
James Dignan and Michael Cavadino are some of the leading penal theorists in the United Kingdom. They have published the key text for courses on the penal system (now in it’s fourth edition I believe) as well as recent material on their own comparative approach to penal systems both in a book and recently in an article in the Winter 07/08 Criminal Justice Matters.
The recent material is what I will focus on, a study of penal practices in 12 different countries. The research has led them to devise a four-fold typology of regime types from these twelve. The first is Neo-Liberal countries, free-market orientated with a minimal welfare state, extreme income differentials and limited social rights. The USA is seen to be the archetypal examples, but in this category falls England and Wales, Australia, New Zealand as well as South Africa.
The second group is what they term Conservative Corporatist countries which are status related but have a much more generous welfare state than neo-liberal countries. Income differentials are pronounced, but not as extreme as neo-liberalism. Germany is seen as the archetypal example of this category, but France, Italy and the Netherlands are also covered by this category.
The third group they describe as Social Democratic Corporatism which have a generous welfare state, minimal income differentials and fairly unconditional social rights. Sweden is the archetype for this group but they also include Finland too.
The fourth and final group is termed Oriental Corporatism which is based on a bureaucratic, private sector ‘welfare corporatism’ with limited income differentials. However there is a distinct hierarchy and a ‘sense of duty’ to those higher up. The archetype (and indeed only country in this group) is Japan.
Their argument is that the group type affects the penal policy in operation in each of the countries. This is backed up by evidence that imprisonment rate varies by these types, thus they present the figures I give below (from the Walmsley, 2007 World Prison Population List)

Country & Prison Population (per 100,000)

USA – 736
South Africa – 335
New Zealand -186
England & Wales – 148
Netherlands – 128
Australia – 126
Italy – 104
Germany – 95
France – 85
Sweden – 82
Finland – 75
Japan – 62

As you can see these figures roughly descend from neo-liberal countries, to conservative corporatist, to social democratic corporatist and finally oriental corporatist.
Cavadino and Dignan argue that this correlation is due to cultural attitudes towards offenders embodied in the political economy of each country. They see this as helping to reinforce certain cultural attitudes towards offending.
I’d argue several things are wrong with this thesis. Firstly, the number of countries covered is very small, this is not a typology that will cover all countries. India, Russia, Brazil and China are all quite large countries and not covered at all by this study. Also there are wide disparities between in particular the neo-liberal countries but also within other groups. Thirdly this argument only takes into account the use of imprisonment, what about non-custodial penalties etc. Finally, I’d argue that although there may be a cultural element involved, neo-liberal countries would tend to have a larger criminal justice system anyway so penal responses are likely to be greater in these countries regardless of cultural differences.