Statehood and state fragility in South Sudan since 2011

The post-independence period revealed a decaying South Sudanese state. In this regard, this study aims to determine the possible dynamics or factors underlying state fragility in South Sudan after independence. The findings of the study reveal five main factors underlying state fragility in South Sudan. Firstly, the South Sudanese state became greatly challenged in the maintenance of its internal sovereignty. It failed to exert control of some parts of its external borders and remained unable to properly organized its internal boundaries. It showed an incapacity to provide basic services to its population without external assistance and was confronted with internal divisions due in part to the lack of national consensus over the form of government to adopt. Secondly, it suffered from a security fragility in the sense of an incapacity to control means of violence, failure of security sector reform, and high susceptibility towards cyclical acts of violence. Thirdly, from an institutional and political perspective, it lacked stable and reliable structures mainly because of the predominance of patronage practices, the constant power struggle between elites, and the inimical impact of the legacy of past liberation struggle on accountability and good governance. Fourthly, the economic structures of the country became tainted by a resource curse, which transformed the existing oil wealth into a source of economic dependency and conflict, by practices of rentierism and economic patronage and by a very low level of underdevelopment. Finally, the social foundations of the country became confronted with vertical and horizontal vulnerabilities. Horizontally, there was an identity crisis due to the lack of social harmony between citizens who tended to identify themselves along with their ethnicity rather than according to a common citizenship. The absence of harmony displayed a fragmented social structure within which ethnic hostilities became common between communities. Vertically, state-society relations were marked, on the one hand, by elites' incapacity or unwillingness to invest in social development to guarantee the provision of basic services and, on the other hand, by a disillusioned population in face of their shattered social expectations and hope.