Dealing with Failed States: Crossing Analytic Boundaries

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.

Table of Contents:
1. Introduction Harvey Starr 2. Pathways to State Failure Jack Goldstone 3. The Logic of State Failure: Learning From Late Century Africa Robert H. Bates 4. Bad Neighbors: Failed States and their Consequences Zaryab Iqbal and Harvey Starr 5. What are the Preconditions for Turnarounds in Failing States? Lisa Chauvet and Paul Collier 6. State Fragility and Implications for Aid Allocation: An Assessment Empirical Analysis David Carment, Yiagadeesen Samy and Stewart Prest 7. Temporal Analysis of Political Instability through Descriptive Subgroup Discovery Lambach and Gamberger 8. Failing States and Failing Regimes: The Prediction and Simulation of State Failure Neil A. Englehart and Marc V. Simon

About the Author :
Harvey Starr is the Dag Hammarskjold Professor in International Studies in the Department of Political Science at the University of South Carolina.