Countries with squiggly borders are more likely to be stable than straight-edged ones

What makes a failed state? Is it a lack of civil government? A poor or nonexistent education system? Ethnic strife? All those elements contribute, but researchers in the U.S. say they may all be linked to one major factor: How squiggly a country’s borders are.

Economists at Harvard University and New York University say that the squigglier a country’s borders, the more likely it is to be prosperous and stable, while countries with straight borders are noticeably likelier to be failed states.

The reason for this, authors Alberto Alesina, Bill Easterly and Janina Matuszeski argue, is that countries with squiggly borders tend to be “natural” –that is, they evolved according to ethnic and linguistic divisions, while straight-bordered countries tend to be “artificial,” the result of colonial powers arbitrarily determining boundaries.

The researchers found that “artifical states are much likelier to have political instability and violence,” co-author Bill Easterly says.

The authors describe how the colonial powers of the 20th century laid the groundwork for today’s conflicts by drawing lines on maps to divide newly-formed countries, often cutting across national lines, forcing hostile ethnic groups to co-exist and at times giving rise to separatist movements. The paper describes the “sometimes hilarious ways” that the world’s powers re-drew the map after the First World War, with “borders drawn on maps with strikes of a pencil by the leaders of England, France and the U.S., ignoring the legwork of their experts and without even knowing the names of the ethnicities involved.”

The result of that problem is most easily evident in Africa, where a majority of countries are “artificial states” who have struggled since independence to maintain a civil society.

Mr. Easterly also points to “the current chaos in Iraq” — a textbook example of an “artificial state” with straight lines for borders — as evidence of what can happen when these states fail. Iraq was formed when Britain offered Syrian king Faisal a territory “cobbling together three different (former Ottoman Empire) provinces containing Kurds, Shiites and Sunnis,” according to the study.

From the constant spate of bombings in Baghdad to this week’s attacks on tourist destinations in Turkey, purportedly by Kurdish separatists, the effects of Iraq’s artificial statehood are still being felt throughout the world.

“The more people there are in a country that belong to partitioned ethnic groups, the more difficulty the country has with having low GDP, worse political institutions and higher infant mortality,” Ms. Matuszeski says.

Mr. Easterly puts it this way: “The dead hand of the colonial mapmaker is still creating headlines today.”

But if a country’s stability and prosperity are linked to its borders’ squiggliness, then how do you account for Canada, with its long, perfectly straight border with the U.S. west of the Great Lakes? Mr. Easterly argues the U.S.-Canada border was determined once both countries had more or less established themselves, and national affinities had already been formed. In other words, unlike in Iraq and in most of Africa, the U.S.-Canada border was not drawn arbitrarily by a colonial ruler.

There are other exceptions to the rule set out by the study, but the authors maintain that the link between squiggly borders and political stability is real. Luxembourg ranks first in border squiggliness, and it is Europe’s wealthiest country by GDP and is considered one of the world’s most stable polities. By contrast, Papua New Guinea in the South Pacific ranks as the world’s least squiggly-bordered state, and just days ago, Australian Prime Minister John Howard began preparing his armed forces in advance of an expected collapse of the country’s government.

“The lesson to be learned is outsiders should not meddle so much in the affairs of other countries,” Mr. Easterly says. “Countries created by outsiders don’t fare very well. And we’re now paying the price for that.”

The Ottawa Citizen
Saturday, September 16, 2006