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?

The Truth/RE: Consolation Prize

This is a poem i wrote about truth commissions and how their limitations mean that they hide the deeper problems people face in the neo-colonial world. Please let me know what you think, as this is the first poem i've written for ages.

so you’ve waited all those years
not knowing, jUst searchiNg
trying to pick up missing pieces
whilst you’re sinking into sand

so you’ve wanted to know why
you, me, US And them
but the frame didn’t fit the picture
links were missing from the chain

so you’re looking for an answer
seE how oUr lives were betrayed
interference blocks the signal
buried under mess they made

so you need to know the details
Where, whaT, hOw?
and you get told this one secret
it’s not okay, cos nothing’s changed

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.