State formation
- Definitions
o Weber, Marx(ist), Nettl (1968), Tilly (1990)
- State-formation, -weakness, -failure
o Formation: Huntington (1968), Rosenau (1970), Anderson (1974), Wallerstein (1974)
 War-making/violence: Tilly (1975), Cohen, et al. (1981), Tilly (1990)
 [Can connect to regimes through Olson (1993)]
 Rational choice/institutionalist: Spruyt (1994), Ertman (1997)
 [North (1981), North (1990), Milgrom, North, and Weingast (1990)]
 Normative argument – nationalism/”nation-state”: Anderson (1983),
Hobsbawm (1992), Meyer, et al. (197)
 Normative argument – sovereignty: Jackson and Rosberg (1982), Krasner
(1995/6)
 Questioning whether these links make sense: Herbst (2000), Centento (2002),
Mazzuca (2003)
o State weakness/failure: Milliken and Krause (2002), Fukuyama (2004), Bates (2008)
 [Can connect to material on ethnic and civil war; state-building from regimes]
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Definitions
o Weber: the state is a human community that successfully claims the monopoly of the
legitimate use of physical force within a given territory; states are compulsory
associations claiming control over territories and the people within them; they include
administrative, legal, extractive, and coercive organizations
 From Jackson and Rosberg (1982):
 Definition of means, not ends (where distinctive means are force)
 This emphasizes the empirical rather than the juridical – the de facto rather
than the de jure attributes of statehood (that is, he doesn’t explore the idea
that jurisdiction is an international legal condition rather than some kind of
sociological given)
 The de facto emphasis implies that two concurrent monopolies of force cannot
exist over one territory and population; in situations where one of several rival
groups – claimant states – is unable to establish permanent control over a
contested territory, Weber would maintain that it is more appropriate to speak
of “statelessness”
 From Fukuyama (2004):
 The essence of stateness is enforcement: the ability, ultimately, to send
someone with a uniform and a gun to force people to comply with the state’s
laws
o Marx(ist): the state as the ruling class (instrument for dominating society – see
Anderson (1974) and Wallerstein (1974) below for examples)
o Nettl (1968): countries vary in their level of “stateness,” which depends on four
components of the state: (1) collectivity that aggregates a set of functions and
structures in order to generalize their applicability, (2) unit in international relations, (3)
autonomous, and (4) sociocultural phenomena
o Tilly (1990): the state is a coercion-wielding organization, distinct from households and
kinship groups; the state exercises clear priority in some respects over all other
organizations within subnational territories
 “National state” – state governing multiple contiguous regions and their cities
by means of centralized, differentiated, and autonomous structures (note: this
is not necessarily the same as a “nation-state,” where people share linguistic,
religious, and/or symbolic identities)
 Note that, historically, national states have appeared only rarely (most
have been non-national, like empires or city-states)
State formation
o Various approaches (from Tilly (1990)):
 Statist analyses: individual states act on their defined interests within an
anarchic international system wherein the interactions among states ultimately
reduce to the thrust of self-interested actors (structural realists, rational
choice); often posit a single, central path of European state formation and a set
of deviations from the path explained by inefficiency, weakness, bad luck,
geopolitical position, or the timing of economic growth
 Huntington (1968) – singles out the effect of war on changes in state
structure, but considers war to have roughly similar effects throughout
Europe
o Critique: often dissolves into particularisms explaining why the
“modern” form of some given state emerged based on the
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special character of a national population/economy; neglect the
hundreds of states that once flourished but then disappeared
 Geopolitical analyses: attach great importance to the international system as
the shaper of states within it; state formation responds strongly to the current
system of relations among states
 Rosenau (1970): distinguishes four patterns of national adaptation to
international politics: acquiescent, intransigent, promotive, and
preservative; each pattern has distinctive consequences for the
character of the executive, party system, legislature, military, and so on
o Critique: fails to specify mechanisms that link particular forms of
state to specific positions within the international system
 Modes of production analyses: spell out the logic of the organization of
production (feudalism, capitalism), then derive the state and its changes almost
entirely from that logic, as it operates within the state’s territory; explanations
of state structure derive largely from the interests of capitalists who operate
within the same state’s jurisdictions
 Anderson (1974) – Marxist treatment, typical Western constellation in
early modern epoch was an aristocratic absolutism raised above social
foundations of a non-servile peasantry and ascendant towns; typical
Eastern constellation was an aristocratic absolutism erected over the
foundations of a servile peasantry and subjugated towns; Swedish
absolutism unique because it was built on a base that combined free
peasants and unimportant towns
o Critique: offers few clues to reasons for variations in form and
activity among states having similar modes of production
 World system analyses: explanation of diverse paths of state formation is
grounded in a characterization of the world economy; the structures of
individual states are consequences of their positions within the world economy
 Wallerstein (1974) – mode of production in a given region creates
certain class structure, which emanates in a certain kind of state; the
character of that state and the relations for the region’s producers and
merchants to the rest of the world economy determine the region’s
position – core, peripheral, or semi-peripheral – in the world economy,
which in turn significantly affects the state’s organization)
o Critique: fail to produce theory linking actual organizational
structures of states to their positions within world system
Links between state-making and war-making/violence
o Tilly (1975)
 War-making and state-making are both forms of organized crime
 The reason that we see the narrowing of hundreds of potential states over time
to only a small number (Europe) is that successful states made war
 Needed to maintain and increase military establishments, which
required higher levels of taxation, which required a more extensive
bureaucracy
 The extractive capacities initially used for military capabilities later were
applied for other purposes

o
o
Four main state activities: (1) war-making (eliminating outside rivals), (2) statemaking (eliminating inside rivals), (3) protection (eliminating enemies), and (4)
extraction (taxation)
Cohen, et al. (1981)
 Entire historical process of creating a national state was a long and violent
struggle pitting the agents of state centralization against myriad local and
regional opponents; by 1900, there were 20 times fewer independent polities in
Europe than there had been in 1500 – they did not disappear peacefully or
decay as the national state developed; they were the losers in a protracted war
of all against all
 Many new states of today are engaged in similar struggles of primitive central
state power accumulation – they are competitive political conflicts for control
over the power resources of the respective territories and populations
 Collective political violence, in and of itself, indicates neither order nor
political decay (decay is standard argument)
 Newly established states are likely both to exacerbate old conflicts and to create
new ones by financing the expansion of the state apparatus through increases in
the tax burden on the major producers of agrarian societies: the peasants
 One of the crucial differences between eruptions of peasant resistance
in new states and that in early modern Europe is that the former are
more integrated into national power struggles
 But, similar in that until these states accumulate the amount of power
resources that will make the costs of anti-state action prohibitive, their
opponents will fiercely resist their extractive claims (to reach this point,
must pass through the violent phase of primitive accumulation of
power)
 The extent to which an expansion of state power will generate collective
violence thus depends on the level of state power prior to that
expansion
o It is the progression toward greater order itself that produces
much of the relatively greater violence we find in new states
Tilly (1990)
 What accounts for the variation over time and space in the kinds of states that
have prevailed in Europe since AD 990 and why did European states eventually
converge on different variants of the national state?
 War and the preparation for war produced the major components of European
states – how?
 Those who controlled means of coercion tried to extend their power – if
they encountered no one with comparable means, they conquered, but
if they met rivals, they made war
 The most powerful rulers set the terms of war for all – smaller rulers
had a choice to either accommodate the more powerful or to put extra
efforts into war preparations (which meant they had to extract the
means of war – like arms, men, and supplies – from others)
o The need to extract the means of war (which involved struggle,
especially depending on the organization of major social classes
within a state’s territory) created the central organizational


structures of states because extraction requires an
infrastructure of taxation, supply, and administration that
requires maintenance of itself
 Europe had coercive-intensive regions and capital-intensive regions with
varying organizations of major social classes – these variations affected
the demands made on and influence over the state and thus the
organizational forms of states (uneven distribution of coercive and
financial resources)
o Coercive-intensive: area of few cities and agricultural
predominance, where direct coercion played a major part in
production (coercive specialists were both soldiers and great
landlords)
 Triad: coercion, states, and domination
o Capital-intensive: areas of many cities and commercial
predominance, where markets, exchange, and market-oriented
production prevailed
 Triad: capital, cities, and exploitation
 Coercive and capitalist means can both
accumulate and concentrate
 When the accumulation and concentration of coercive
means grow together they produce states (note,
though, that this isn’t a direct path of accumulation and
concentration – has peaks and valleys)
 States that lost wars commonly contracted or
ceased to exist
 States with largest coercive means tended to
win wars
 The increasing scale of war and the knitting together of the European
state system through commercial, military, and diplomatic interaction
eventually gave the war-making advantage to those states that could
field standing armies; states with access to a combination of large rural
populations, capitalists, and relatively commercialized economies thus
won out and set the terms of war; their form of state – the national
state – became the predominant one in Europe
In European history, we see three types of states:
 Empires – coercion-intensive; followed by continent’s eastern and
northern rim
 Fragmented sovereignty – capital-intensive; followed by city-states
 National states – capitalized coercion (this path was most effective in
war); intermediate path; England, France, Prussia; thanks to their
superior resources and organizations, these states dominated the
continent, thus forcing their neighbors to adopt their methods or perish
The formation of states was not a type of engineering/planning
 No precise model – the principal components formed as inadvertent byproducts of efforts to carry out more immediate tasks like the
creation/support of armed force

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Other states strongly affected the path of change followed by any
particular state
 Struggle/bargaining with different classes in subject population shaped
the states that emerged; popular rebellions usually lost, but left marks
on the state in the form of repressive policies or settlements specifying
rights of affected parties
o Note: assumes that war leading to state structure holds
everywhere, but the peculiarities of the argument apply only to
Europe
o Critiques: too much causal weight on war; ideological issues
play no role in state-making (Reformation? nationalism?)
 Most states fail due to problems with tax collection, primitive transportation
infrastructure, and religious/ethnic/national divisions
Rational choice/institutionalist argument
o Spruyt (1994) (fits in nicely with North’s work)
 The sovereign territorial state prevailed because it proved more effective at
preventing defection by its members, reducing internal transaction costs, and
making credible commitments to other units
 Sovereign rulers were better at centralizing jurisdiction and authority,
which allowed them to prevent free riding and rationalize their
economies/standardize coinage, weights, and measures
 Sovereign territoriality was a means of structuring inter-unit behavior –
states preferred other states because they could more credibly commit
 Actors from other institutional arrangements defected to states or
copied their institutional makeup
 By the 14th century, existing forms like theocracy, feudalism, and traditional
empires proved unsuitable for an emerging pre-capitalist economic
environment because transaction costs were high (example: England had
hundreds of different major measures; in France and Germany, there were
hundreds of lords who minted their own coins  traders had to learn which
exchange rates were operative  much speculation) – the future thus laid with
three “state forms” – the city-league (Germany), city-state (Italy), and sovereign
territorial state (England and France), which were attempts to solve the
discrepancy between emerging trans-local markets and existing political
arrangements (all three were able to mobilize more resources than could
traditional feudal organization)
 Why did the sovereign territorial state beat out the other two options?
o Key: the principle of sovereignty, which says that authority is
limited by precise spatial terms and is subject to no other
authority (authority is territorial and exclusive)
 Sovereign rulers centralized fragmented political
systems and thus reduced legal uncertainty and
domestic transaction costs; reduced problems of transboundary trade because clear who should be
negotiating ( credible commitments  less
uncertainty/more legitimacy)
 It solved the tension between markets and hierarchies
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
Ertman (1997)
 Criticizes war-oriented theories of state formation because they (1) pay too little
attention to the role played by different kinds of representative institutions in
the failure/triumph of royal plans to introduce absolutism, (2) are too willing to
link one kind of political regime with only one kind of state apparatus (example:
absolutism with bureaucracy v. constitutionalism with non-bureaucracy), and (3)
underplay the prevalence of dysfunctional, patrimonial institutional
arrangements in early states (which makes them underestimate the difficulties
involved in creating proto-modern bureaucracies)
 Four types of states according to different combinations of political regime
(patrimonial or bureaucratic) and state infrastructure (absolutist or
constitutional)
 So what accounts for this variation across Europe?
 Organization of local government during the first few centuries after
state formation (during first period of state-building)
o England, Sweden, and Poland created national representative
bodies to approve taxes to meet external military threats 
constitutional infrastructure
o Latin Europe and German officials answered to the center, but
had little role for local population  absolutist infrastructure
 Timing of the onset of sustained geopolitical competition
o Similar to Gerschenkron (1962): early state-builders expanded
infrastructures using methods that became outdated but
proved difficult to replace due to stake in established
institutions while late state-builders adapted latest techniques,
learned from mistakes of early state-builders, and had more
expert access
 Independent influence of strong representative assemblies on
administrative and financial institutions
o Existed only in constitutional states, but interacted with timing
o England – early onset of geopolitical competition; state
apparatus with patrimonialist tendencies already in place
before parliament; goal of representatives became to reform
this system  bureaucratization
o Hungary/Poland – onset of sustained geopolitical competition
occurred after representative assemblies existed, so they were
able to block the construction of bureaucratic infrastructure 
patrimonialization
Normative argument – nationalism/”nation-state”
o Anderson (1983)
o Hobsbawm (1992)
o
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City-league: fragmented sovereignty and nonterritoriality (problems with establishing
internal hierarchy and was thus less successful
than states in standardizing coinage and
centralizing jurisdiction; couldn’t credibly
commit to international treaties)
City-state: fragmented sovereignty
o
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Meyer, et al. (1997)
 Many features of the contemporary nation-state derive from worldwide models
constructed and propagated through global, cultural, and associational
processes
 Nation-state is culturally constructed and embedded, where culture is
substantially organized on a worldwide basis, not simply built up from local
circumstances and history
 This is why it routinely organizes and legitimates itself in terms of
universalistic models like citizenship, socioeconomic development, and
rationalized justice
 Nation-states must be understood as, in part, constructions of a common wider
culture (not self-directed actors responding rationally):
 Exhibit a great deal of isomorphism in their structures and policies
(example: see an increase in rates of women in higher education
everywhere, not just in developed economies)
 Make valiant efforts to live up to the model of rational actors (uniform
definition of goals as enhancement of collective progress, individual
rights, and development)
 Marked by considerable decoupling between purposes and structure,
intentions and results (nation-states modeled on external culture that
cannot simply be imported wholesale as a fully functioning system)
 Undergo expansive structuration in largely standardized ways (example:
impoverished countries routinely establish universities producing
overqualified personnel)
 If a nation-state neglects to adopt world-approved policies, domestic elements
will try to carry out or enforce conformity (nation-states tend to copy one
another)
 Note: this links to Gerschenkron (1962) and the dependency school of
thought
 The development and impact of global sociocultural structuration greatly
intensified with the creation of a central world organizational frame at the end
of WWII (UN, IMF, WB, GATT)
Normative argument – sovereignty
o Overview: state system formalized after 1648 Treaty of Westphalia, which codifies the
behavior of states in Western Europe and recognizes territorial control by central states
o Jackson and Rosberg (1982)
 According to Weber’s definition, a few of Africa’s governments would not
qualify as states – at least not all the time – because they cannot always
effectively claim to have a monopoly of force throughout their territorial
jurisdictions
 And yet, it is evident that (1) all of these persist as members of the international
society of states and (2) while none of the claimant governments have on
occasion exercised de facto control over large territories/populations within the
jurisdictions of existing states, they have succeeded in creating new states in
these areas
 So, cannot explain the persistence of some “states” by using a concept
of the state that does not give sufficient attention to juridical properties

o
Brownlie: juridical attributes of statehood are “territory” and
“independence” (as recognized by the international community); a
government recognized as having political independence is legally the
equal of other independent governments and is not only the highest
authority within its territorial jurisdiction but is under no higher
authority (anarchy/sovereignty)
 In sub-Saharan Africa, empirical properties highly variable, while juridical
components have been constant
 Few African states can qualify as stable communities (ethnic divisions
that have been politicized  civil conflict)
 Governments do not necessarily govern by legislation; personal rulers
often operate in an arbitrary and autocratic manner by means of
commands, edicts, decrees, and so forth; much institutional weakness,
inefficiency, and underdevelopment; frequent military coups; reliance
on primary export commodities makes these states very much affected
by changes in world prices
 Juridical state is a novel and arbitrary political unit – the territorial
boundaries, legal identities, and often even the names of states are
contrivances of colonial rule; at independence, then, there was really no
choice but to establish independence in terms of the colonial entities
o The opposition of existing African states and international
society has reinforced the legitimacy of the inherited frontiers
and undermined that of traditional cultural borders
o This international society, therefore, is enabling weak states to
survive
 Why has the existing pattern of juridical statehood been maintained in Africa?
 Ideology of pan-Africanism (against colonialism, but only way to express
this was to use the European colonies  legitimation of successor
states); vulnerability of all states in the region and the insecurity of
statesmen (to survive, weak African governments need to be assured of
the recognition and respect for their sovereignty by neighboring states
and states in a position to undermine their authority); support of larger
international society; reluctance of non-African powers to intervene
without having been invited to do so by governments
Krasner (1995/6)
 Westphalian model is based on the principles of autonomy and territory,
meaning states can be treated as if they were autonomous, unified, rational
actors
 This model has never been an accurate description of many of the entities called
states – rulers have chosen or been forced to accept other principles (not
autonomous)
 Thus, we need to think of this model as a reference point that might or might
not determine the behavior of policymakers who are also motivated by material
interests, security, and national ideals, and whose ability to influence outcomes
depends upon their power (all states are not the same); it has become common
knowledge, but never taken for granted in the sense of precluding the
exploration of alternative arrangements

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Compromises of Westphalia occur in the following four ways (and note that
every peace treaty since, and including, Westphalia has involved violations):
 Conventions – example is human rights accords; European Convention
of Human Rights – has monitoring and enforcement procedures and
court can make decisions binding on national jurisdictions  infringes
on Westphalian model (though not all conventions have to)
 Contracting – can compromise autonomy, as seen in sovereign lending
(Greece – first independent Ottoman state in 1832, loan from Britain,
France, and Russia with conditions pledging that paying back would be
first priority, defaulted, borrowing increased again after 1878, after war
with Turkey over Crete in 1897 couldn’t service foreign debt  Control
Commission, with one representative appointed by each major power,
had absolute control over sources of revenue needed to fund war
indemnity and foreign debt); can compromise territoriality, as seen in
the EU
o These two are pareto-improving – make at least one party
better off without making anyone worse off; rulers enter them
voluntarily because compromising Westphalian principles is
more attractive than honoring them
 Coercion – example is economic sanctions aimed at domestic
institutions, policies, or personnel; imposing the Bavarian Otto as the
monarch in Greece in 1832 (Greece had no bargaining power, but
wanted international recognition)
 Imposition – most obvious example is force
o These two leave at least one of the actors worse off; involve
contingent behavior – the actions of one ruler depend upon
what the other does; involve power asymmetries
Do these war-making links make sense outside of Europe?
o Herbst (2000)
 Assumption: states are only viable if they are able to control the territory
defined by their borders
 Fundamental problem for leaders of sub-Saharan African states: how to
broadcast power over sparsely settled lands with serious barriers to longdistance travel (relatively low population densities have automatically meant
that it has always been more expensive for states to exert control over a given
number of people compared to Europe and other densely settled areas)
 While colonialism is important, attributing everything to it is wrong –
the Europeans were not able to change everything because they had to
take Africa’s political geography as a given (unwilling/unable to change
landscape)
 Leaders confront three sets of issues when building states:
 (1) cost of expanding the domestic power infrastructure (if state is
making an incremental step beyond its central base that can be
achieved using existing capabilities, costs will be lower than if authority
is being projected to an area far beyond the base, as this requires
mobilization of an entirely new set of resources)

o
(2) nature of national boundaries (African boundaries have been the
critical foundation upon which leaders have built their states; these help
shape other buffer institutions that insulate polities from international
pressures or economic/political threats)
 (3) design of state systems (rulers in Africa created a particular type of
state system in order to help them confront the peculiar difficulties they
were having in exercising their authority across the territories they were
said to control; characterized by cooperation, not continual conflict)
 Europe – starting in 15th century in Italy, population densities increased 
competition for territory; state development characterized by profound links
between the cities – the core political areas and distribution points for capital –
and the surrounding territories; growth of states closely correlated with
development of significant urban areas
 Africa – by 1975, just reached population density of Europe in 1500; current
states created well before many capital cities reached maturity; Europeans did
create urban areas after formally colonizing in late 19th century, but these cities
were designed to serve needs of colonizers (most located on the coast; moved
power toward the ocean and away from interior centers of power that Africans
had slowly created and that had managed to exert control over parts of their
surrounding territories); these capitals therefore did not immediately begin to
effectively extend power throughout their extensive but sparsely settled
territories; during terminal colonial period, politics became national in many
countries as nationalist movements emerged, but the neglect of rural areas by
colonial governments meant that these politics were urban affairs; one effect
was that politicians traditionally equated their political survival with appeasing
their urban populations via subsidies even if the much larger, and poorer, rural
populations had to be taxed
 Wars of territorial conquest have seldom been a significant aspect of
Africa’s history; in pre-colonial times, leaders mainly exploited people
outside their own polity (captured people rather than control over
territory – land was available to all); the consequential role that war
played in European state development was not replicated in Africa
(African states lacked the security imperative to physically control the
hinterlands in the face of competition from hostile neighbors)
o This is true not only of Africa, but also parts of Latin America,
like Mexico, and Russia (anarchic northern frontier as an
opportunity to escape from the state)
 African politics are not so different – as elsewhere, political outcomes are the
result of human agency interacting with powerful geographic and historical
forces; the viability of African states depends on leaders successfully meeting
the challenges posed by their particular environment
Centeno (2002)
 Latin American states do not resemble European states because state capacity
in Latin America is limited
 Tilly (1990): “states made war, and war made states”
 In Latin America, states fought war less frequently and less intensely
than in Europe


o
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Unlike European wars, Latin American wars involved small armies, little
civilian engagement, short overall durations, and small geographic
areas; they were also fought within territories, rather than between
states
Without the European-style pressures stemming from war, Latin
American political elites didn’t have to tax their populations, build
modern and efficient state institutions, and the weaker states were not
weeded out by the stronger ones
o So, limited war produced limited states
Mazzuca (2003)
 In Latin America, international military expansion was not a top priority; state
was seen more as a commercial linkage to the expanding economies of the
North Atlantic than as a source of security (merchants, not warriors)
 While there were internal conflicts after independence, this was mainly
seen as a major obstacle to commercial integration into world
capitalism; state-formation thus did involve political pacification and
neutralization of regional groups resisting national unification (this isn’t
different from elsewhere), but it was sought as a precondition to
successful integration in the world economy (this is what’s different –
not as a means to international geopolitical strength)
 We see these differences manifest in the weak presence of Latin
American states in the interior of their territories; negotiated a
minimalist project of state-formation – this included the acceptance of a
national center of authority by local notables in exchange for
concessions that were large enough to secure the political stability
required to attract foreign investments and ignite the export economy
 A further difference is in the level of bureaucratization/infrastructuredevelopment – Latin American states are more patrimonial and less
capable of mobilizing resources across territories than Western
European cases
 So, in short, what explains the differences in institutional outcome in Latin
America from Western Europe?
 Differences in both the goals (war v. trade) and the means (internal v.
external sources) of state formation
State-building, state-weakness, and state-failure (connects with material on ethnic and civil war)
o Milliken and Krause (2002)
 Must distinguish between state failure and collapse (otherwise blurring the
different processes that lead to the two things); state maintenance (in whatever
weakened or destroyed capacity) is the norm, state collapse is the exception;
must also not confuse state failure or collapse with political conflict or civil war
 For every claim that a state has collapsed, is failing, or is going to fail, contains
two usually implicit definitions or benchmarks:
 “Stateness” against which any given state should be measured as having
succeeded or failed (institutional dimension of state collapse)
 Normative and practical implications of such a failure (functional
dimension of state failure)
o
o
Tension exists between these understandings of state failure:
state institutions can persist even while the state fails to fulfill
what we understand as its key attributes
 Functions a state is supposed to perform: providing security, representation,
and welfare (state seen as efficient way to give property rights/secure markets)
– failure to perform these functions is a failure of the state
 Attention to the representative function of the state leads to a focus on failures
of nation-building and their implications for potential state collapse (example:
Afghanistan or Sudan); invites consideration of the impact of communal
conflicts over recognition and representation (example: Albanians in
Macedonia); relationship between conflicts cast in the language of selfdetermination and state collapse (normative implications)
 States can fail relative to the economy/welfare if it doesn’t provide a stable
politico-legal framework in which human, social, and economic capital can be
accumulated and invested
 Norms: commitment to state-building; there is an assumption that modern
statehood is the only form of political organization that makes any sense for the
post-colonial world; state collapse is treated as a local nightmare, but also a
potential source of insecurities for the core states of international society and as
a phenomenon that threatens to undermine the modern project of achieving
political order
Bates (2008)
 State failure – implosion of the state, meaning (1) the transformation of the
state into an instrument of predation (those in power use the state to promote
their own interests) and (2) a loss of the monopoly over the means of coercion
(political competition takes place between groups bearing arms)
 Political Instability Task Force – state failure can include outbreak of
ethnic war, revolutionary war, genocide, and “adverse regime changes”
(collapse of the state – Somalia; revolutionary displacement of elite –
Iran; dissolution of a state – Yugoslavia; transition from democratic to
authoritarian – Haiti)
o In recent years, the stock of failed states has declined
 State failure is not the same as revolution – revolutions create a new order
while state failure yields disorder
 State failure is not necessarily the same as civil war, but there is a high
correspondence (at least in Africa)
 [summarizes civil war literature – see security – DPT and war outline]