Constellations of State Fragility (3.0)

Constellations of State Fragility provides an empirical typology of states from a fragility perspective. It uses global data from 2005-2024 to identify typical constellations of state fragility. We conceptualize fragility as constituted of deficiencies in three dimensions: authority, capacity and legitimacy:

Authority: The authority dimension measures the ability of the state to control the use of physical violence within its territory. Authority is measured using battle-related deaths, homicide rates as well as a composite indicator of a state’s monopoly of violence.

Capacity: The capacity dimension measures the ability of the state to provide basic public services to its population. Capacity is measured using child mortality rates, access to clean water, primary school enrolment rates as well as a composite indicator of basic administration capacity.

Legitimacy: The legitimacy dimension denotes the ability of the state to obtain the consent of the population to the state’s dominance. Legitimacy is measured using indicators of government censorship, human rights scores as well as the number of asylums granted to citizens of a state.

Version 3.0

This update to version 3.0 makes two major changes compared to version 2.0:

•  A data update, consisting of
  • the inclusion of data for the years 2021-2024, extending the overall period covered to 2005-2024;
  • a modification of how the battle deaths indicator is calculated: now only battle deaths occurring in the country’s own territory are considered to increase validity;
  •  a modification of the indicator measuring school enrolment rates: we move from net to gross enrolment, due to lack of recent data for net enrolment;
  •  the replacement of the indicator measuring human rights: the ‘Human rights protection scores’ by Christopher Fariss is replaced by the ‘Physical violence index’ provided by Varieties of Democracy) due to lack of recent data for the Human rights protection scores,
  •  and minor changes for the years 2005-2020 deriving from original data updates provided by data providers.
• Based on these new data, new estimates of the nature of constellations of fragility. This results in the same eight typical constellations of state fragility that were identified by v2.

Provided Data Files

The data on Constellations of State Fragility (3.0) is provided in the following formats:

• CSV file  (ConstellationsOfStateFragility_Data_v3.0.csv)
• R data format (ConstellationsOfStateFragility_Data_v3.0.rds)
• Excel file (ConstellationsOfStateFragility_Data_v3.0.xlsx)

Visit the Online Data Visualisation to interact directly with the data: www.StateFragility.info 

Additional files:

• PDF file with methodological updates to the Codebook (ConstellationsOfStateFragility_Codebook_v3.0.pdf)
• PDF file documenting the methodological framework including the coding and data imputation process of Constellations of State Fragility (ConstellationsOfStateFragility_Methodology_v3.0.pdf)