State-Building

Francis Fukuyama is a senior fellow and the Mosbacher director of the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law at Stanford University. He is the author of Political Order and Political Decay, State-Building, The End of History and the Last Man, The Origins of Political Order, America at the Crossroads, and Falling Behind.

• 1. The Missing Dimensions of StatenessThe Contested Role of the StateScope versus StrengthScope, Strength, and Economic DevelopmentThe New Conventional WisdomThe Supply of InstitutionsThe Demand for InstitutionsMaking Things Worse2. Weak States and the Black Hole of Public AdministrationInstitutional Economics and the Theory of OrganizationsThe Ambiguity of GoalsPrincipals, Agents, and IncentivesDecentralization and DiscretionLosing, and Reinventing, the WheelCapacity-Building under Conditions of Organizational Ambiguity: Policy Implications3. Weak States and International LegitimacyThe New EmpireThe Erosion of SovereigntyNation-BuildingDemocratic Legitimacy at an International LevelBeyond the Nation-State4. Smaller but StrongerBibliographyIndex

Fukuyama asserts that the lack of 'organizational tradition' in 'failed or weak' nations such as Afghanistan and Haiti represents the greatest threat to an orderly world. He argues that the United States, and the West in general, after rightly intervening in such states either militarily or economically (most often through the IMF or World Bank), have failed to transfer institutional and public- and private-sector know-how to needy countries.... Since he sees the 'international community' represented by the United Nations as a myth because it lacks a military, the mantle of leadership must be worn by the U.S., at great risk to itself.... Fukuyama's ideas will no doubt be much discussed.(Publishers Weekly) Fukuyama is a wonderful synthesizer of grand subjects, an adventurer who doesn't mind summing up the history of development theory in one chapter and the history of organizational theory in the next. He pulls this off with minimal resort to jargon, and he pulls the reader along with him.(Washington Post Book World) Fukuyama persuasively argues that the great problems of our day—'from poverty to AIDS to drugs to terrorism'—result not from excesses of the state but from its persistent weakness or utter failure in many countries....' State collapse or weakness had already created major humanitarian and human rights disasters during the 1990s in Somalia, Haiti, Cambodia, Bosnia, Kosovo, and East Timor.' Americans once could believe that such disasters would affect us only to the degree that we chose to help out by sending cash or peacekeepers. But 9/11, of course, showed that even a rich and powerful country remains vulnerable to catastrophes brewed in distant, troubled lands.(Baltimore Sun) This is a very useful, intelligent, and short book by Francis Fukuyama, a leading political thinker. It examines a central issue in the age of terrorism: the perils (and sometimes necessities) of 'state-building' in weakened failed states. One hopes it will become a must-read for State Department policymakers.(National Review)