Making states work : state failure and the crisis of governance

This publication is the result of a joint interdisciplinary project of the International Peace Academy and the United Nations University. It focuses on situations when state structures begin to break down or collapse, encompassing a range of crises from states in which basic public services are neglected to the total collapse of governance. It looks at the roles and responsibilities of key actors in the situation in relation to their own populations and the international community, and considers the lessons that can be drawn from a range of countries to develop effective strategies to address such situations.
In the wealth of literature on state failure, surprisingly little attention has been paid to the question of what constitutes state success and what enables a state to succeed. This book is a joint project of the International Peace Academy and the United Nations University and examines the strategies and tactics of inter national actors, local political elites, and civil society groups to build or rebuild public institutions before they reach the point of failure: to make the state work.
It is frequently assumed that the collapse of state structures, whether through defeat by an external power or as a result of internal chaos, leads to a vacuum of political power. This is rarely the case. The mechanisms through which political power are exercised may be less formalized or consistent, but basic questions of how best to ensure the physical and economic security of oneself and one's dependants do not simply disappear when the institutions of the state break. down. Non-state actors in such situations may exercise varying degrees of politi cal power over local populations, at times providing basic social services from education to medical care. Even where non-state actors exist as parasites on local populations, political life goes on.

How to engage in such an environment is a particular problem for policy-makers in intergovernmental organizations and donor governments. But it poses far greater. difficulties for the embattled state institutions and the populations of such territo ries. Making States Work examines how these various actors have responded to crises in the legitimacy and viability of state institutions, with a particular emphasis on those situations in which the state has been salvaged or at least kept afloat.