State failure is seen as one of the significant threats to regional and international stability in the current international system. State Failure in the Modern World presents a comprehensive, systematic, and empirically rigorous analysis of the full range of the state failure process in the post-World War II state system―including what state failure means, its causes, what accounts for its duration, its consequences, and its implications. Among the questions the book addresses are: when and why state failure occurs, why it recurs in any single state, and when and why its consequences spread to other states. The book sets out the array of problems in previous work on state failure with respect to conceptualization and definition, as well as how the causes and consequences of state failure have been addressed, and presents analyses to deal with these problems. Any analysis of state failure can be seen as an exercise in policy evaluation; this book undertakes the theoretical, conceptual, and analytic work that must be done before we can evaluate―or have much confidence in―both current and proposed policy prescriptions to prevent or manage state collapse. "This book makes a significant contribution to our understanding of state failure. The authors make new contributions to the literature in ways that are both innovative and have important policy implications. With their well thought-out analysis and discussion, they bring the key threads of the challenge of state failure together in one book." ―Victor Asal, Rockefeller College, SUNY Albany "State failure is an incredibly important real world issue that has puzzled policymakers since the 1990s. This book pushes the empirical analysis of this problem forward, and is one of the best analyses of state failure currently available." ―Cameron G. Thies, Arizona State University Zaryab Iqbal is Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at Pennsylvania State University. She is the author of War and the Health of Nations (Stanford, 2010). Harvey Starr is Dag Hammarskjöld Professor of International Affairs in the Department of Political Science at the University of South Carolina. State Failure in the Modern World By Zaryab Iqbal, Harvey Starr STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS Copyright © 2016 Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-0-8047-7674-5 Contents List of Tables and Figures, Acknowledgments, 1. Introduction, 2. State Failure: Conceptualization and Definition, 3. Why Do States Collapse? Determinants of State Failure, 4. The Duration of State Failure, 5. Recurrent Collapse and Its Causes, 6. The Consequences of State Failure, 7. State Failure: Prevention and Management, 8. Conclusion, Notes, References, Index, CHAPTER 1 Introduction STATE FAILURE AND THE STUDY OF WORLD POLITICS In the contemporary turbulent world of globalization and ever-increasing interdependence across individuals, groups, international organizations, and nation-states, the existence of weak, fragile, or failed states is increasingly seen as a significant concern. In this book, we argue that state failure is associated with a range of factors pertaining to domestic politics as well as international influences, and that it is a phenomenon that is tremendously important to global security and human security in the current international system. More specifically, we demonstrate that the study of state failure, and assessing its impact on internal and international conflict and unrest, are consistent with a large body of international relations literature that engages the relationship between domestic and international politics — especially the study of civil war and development. As the reader moves through this book, we hope that the strengths of our approach to state failure will become apparent. We provide a more nuanced theoretical analysis of state failure, along with an explicit discussion of its conceptualization, as well as the measurement of state collapse. Thus the book presents a unified conceptual and operational definition of state collapse, which is the foundation for a systematic empirical study of the set of collapsed states from 1946 to 2010. We do so using a multi-method approach, integrating comparative case studies with larger-scale quantitative analyses. The result is a comprehensive analysis of the full range of the failure process (from causes to duration to consequences), concluding with policy implications. These conclusions reflect empirical findings important for policy, including various factors underlying the onset of failure and its duration. Because state failure is indeed an important issue in the global system, and one without simple answers, we need to set out the proper context for its study. This introductory chapter briefly situates the book amid the burgeoning literature on the importance of domestic political and social phenomena for international relati