Collapsed States

This work uses 11 African case studies in its exploration of the phenomenon of collapsed states. The writers consider the causes of collapse; symptoms and early warning signs; and how the situation was met. They also assess the strengths and weaknesses of various responses, such as UN action.

The threat of terror, which flares in Africa and Indonesia, has given the problem of failed states an unprecedented immediacy and importance. In the past, failure had a primarily humanitarian dimension, with fewer implications for peace and security. Now nation-states that fail, or may do so, pose dangers to themselves, to their neighbors, and to people around the globe: preventing their failure, and reviving those that do fail, has become a strategic as well as a moral imperative. State Failure and State Weakness in a Time of Terror develops an innovative theory of state failure that classifies and categorizes states along a continuum from weak to failed to collapsed. By understanding the mechanisms and identifying the tell-tale indicators of state failure, it is possible to develop strategies to arrest the fatal slide from weakness to collapse. This state failure paradigm is illustrated through detailed case studies of states that have failed and collapsed (the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sierra Leone, the Sudan, Somalia), states that are dangerously weak (Colombia, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Tajikistan), and states that are weak but safe (Fiji, Haiti, Lebanon).

Social science.

Since 1990, more than 10 million people have been killed in the civil wars of failed states, and hundreds of millions more have been deprived of fundamental rights. The threat of terrorism has only heightened the problem posed by failed states. When States Fail is the first book to examine how and why states decay and what, if anything, can be done to prevent them from collapsing. It defines and categorizes strong, weak, failing, and collapsed nation-states according to political, social, and economic criteria. And it offers a comprehensive recipe for their reconstruction. The book comprises fourteen essays by leading scholars and practitioners who help structure this disparate field of research, provide useful empirical descriptions, and offer policy recommendations. Robert Rotberg's substantial opening chapter sets out a theory and taxonomy of state failure. It is followed by two sets of chapters, the first on the nature and correlates of failure, the second on methods of preventing state failure and reconstructing those states that do fail. Economic jump-starting, legal refurbishing, elections, the demobilizing of ex-combatants, and civil society are among the many topics discussed. All of the essays are previously unpublished. In addition to Rotberg, the contributors include David Carment, Christopher Clapham, Nat J. Colletta, Jeffrey Herbst, Nelson Kasfir, Michael T. Klare, Markus Kostner, Terrence Lyons, Jens Meierhenrich, Daniel N. Posner, Susan Rose-Ackerman, Donald R. Snodgrass, Nicolas van de Walle, Jennifer A. Widner, and Ingo Wiederhofer.

This text examines how and why States decay and what, if anything, can be done to prevent them from collapsing. The disparate field of research is structured acording to political, social and economic criteria.

The rise and fall of the Cold War coincided with the universalization and consolidation of the modern nation-state as the key unit of the wider international system. A key characteristic of the post-Cold War era, in which the US has emerged as the sole superpower, is the growing number of collapsing or collapsed states. A growing number of states are, or have become, mired in conflict or civil war, the antecedents of which are often to be found in the late-colonial and Cold War era. At the same time, US foreign policy (and the actions of other organizations such as the United Nations) may well be compounding state failure in the context of the post-9/11 Global War on Terror (GWOT) or what is also increasingly referred to as the ‘Long War’. The Long War is often represented as a ‘new’ era in warfare and geopolitics. This book acknowledges that the Long War is new in important respects, but it also emphasizes that the Long War bears many similarities to the Cold War. A key similarity is the way in which insurgency and counterinsurgency were and continue to be seen primarily in the context of inter-state rivalry in which the critical local or regional dynamics of revolution and counter-revolution are marginalized or neglected. In this context American policy-makers and their allies have again erroneously applied a ‘grand strategy’ that suits the imperatives of conventional military and geo-political thinking rather than engaging with what are a much more variegated array of problems facing the changing global order. This book provides a collection of well-integrated studies that shed light on the history and future of insurgency, counterinsurgency and collapsing states in the context of the Long War. This book was previously published as a special issue of Third World Quarterly.

With the ever-increasing interdependence across individuals, groups, international organizations, and nation-states an increasingly significant policy concern in the contemporary turbulent world of globalization is the question of state failure. There has been a growing academic interest in the determinants of state failure and an acute awareness across the international community of the need for dealing with issues of instability in states. The contributors to this volume represent the most recent cutting edge approaches to state failure—looking at both conditions of conflict and economic development, dealing with the conceptualization, causes, and consequences of state failure, as well as policy-oriented analyses as to how state failure can be contained, reversed, or prevented. In order to deal fully with the phenomenon of state failure, investigators must be involved in a number of boundary-crossing activities. The contributors to this volume have addressed failed states through: multiple levels of analysis, assessing domestic and cross-border phenomena, internal and external conflict, domestic and international political economy; multiple disciplines and interdisciplinary approaches representing political science, sociology, and economics; various methodological approaches, including large-N empirical analyses, case studies, and simulations; and through both basic and applied research, drawing on the work of academics, IGOs, NGOs, and national governments. This book was originally published as a special issue of Conflict Management and Peace Science.