Crisis state

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Stable states Crisis states

A crisis state is a state under acute stress, where reigning institutions face serious contestation and are potentially unable to manage conflict and shocks. In other words, there is a danger of state collapse. This is not an absolute condition, but a condition at a given point of time, so a state can reach a crisis condition and recover from it, or can remain in crisis over relatively long periods of time, or a crisis state can unravel and collapse.

Such a process could lead to the formation of new states, to war and chaos, or to the consolidation of the ancien régime.

Specific crises within the subsystems of the state can also exist—for instance, an economic crisis, a public health crisis like HIV/AIDS, a public order crisis, or a constitutional crisis—with each on its own not amounting to a generalised condition of a crisis state although a subsystem crisis can be sufficiently severe and/or protracted that it gives rise to the generalised condition of a crisis state.

The opposite of a crisis state is a resilient state, where institutions are generally able to cope with conflict, to manage sub-state crises, to respond to contestation, wherever the state sits between fragility and stability.