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Fukuyama, Francis. State Building: Governance and World Order in the 21st Century. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell Univ. Press, 2004. 132pp. $21
This is an important policy analysis. Francis Fukuyama, an expert on political and economic development, has served on the State Department's policy planning staff and is now professor of international political economy at Johns Hopkins University.
In his book State Building, Fukuyama argues here that the international community must do a better job of "statebuilding . . . because weak or failed states are the sources of many of the world's most serious problems." We know a lot about public administration, he says, but much less about how to "transfer strong institutions to developing countries."
Fukuyama coins the term "stateness," referring to a regime's ability to perform. He distinguishes two dimensions of stateness: state strength, which denotes that a government can "enforce laws cleanly and transparently," and state scope, which embraces the range of the functions that a government tries to accomplish.
To understand what Fukuyama means by scope, imagine a government that seeks only to maintain public order, enforce contracts, provide national defense, and manage its money supply. Fukuyama would describe that state as having modest scope. Next, imagine a...