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Robert I. Rotberg, ed., When States Fail: Causes and Consequences. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004. Maps, tables, bibliography, index, 335 pp; paperback $21.95.
This volume, consisting of 14 chapters written by 16 contributors, is an impressive effort to explain how and why nation-states fail and collapse. After cataloging a variety of causes and paths of state failure, it offers several intriguing suggestions for how those states (or their inheritors) might be successfully reestablished. It also proposes the argument that in cases of collapsed states, both the international community and people living in those states might be better off relinquishing long-held ideas about the inviolate nature of state sovereignty and instead seeking solutions to those crises in other forms of organization.
For the most part, the contributing authors take the nation-state as a settled and preferred form of political organization and focus their analyses on how nation-states fail, what can be done to minimize the cases of failure, and how failed and collapsed states can be resuscitated or reborn as more stable, more successful entities. While the analyses and prescriptions offered in this collection vary and the authors' approaches do not always agree with one another, a unifying theme is that as human agency is ultimately at the root of political organization, state failure is not inevitable, and that given the proper conditions and motivations, successful states can emerge from the ruins of failure and collapse.
Along with the large increase in the number of independent states, the latter twentieth century also saw an increase in the number of states whose stability was doubtful, as their political, social, and cartographical foundations were comparatively precarious. The strength of states can be classified, according to Rotberg, by examining their ability reliably to provide a number of what he categorizes as crucial political goods. The basket of political goods that serve as indicators include human security, a regularized system of dispute resolution, mechanisms for political participation, and various components of physical infrastructure. Strong states generally amply provide their citizens most if not all of these goods, while weak states can be classified by the degree to which they fail to provide one or more category of them.
In addition, weak states are typically characterized by conflict over control of...