State-Building

by Fukuyama, Francis

• ISBN13: 9780801442926
• ISBN10: 0801442923
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2004-04-08
• Publisher: Cornell Univ Pr

Summary

Francis Fukuyama famously predicted "the end of history" with the ascendancy of liberal democracy and global capitalism. The topic of his latest book is, therefore, surprising: the building of new nation-states. The end of history was never an automatic procedure, Fukuyama argues, and the well-governed polity was always its necessary precondition. "Weak or failed states are the source of many of the world's most serious problems," he believes. He traces what we know-and more often don't know-about how to transfer functioning public institutions to developing countries in ways that will leave something of permanent benefit to the citizens of the countries concerned. These are important lessons, especially as the United States wrestles with its responsibilities in Afghanistan, Iraq, and beyond. Fukuyama begins State-Building with an account of the broad importance of "stateness." He rejects the notion that there can be a science of public administration, and discusses the causes of contemporary state weakness. He ends the book with a discussion of the consequences of weak states for international order, and the grounds on which the international community may legitimately intervene to prop them up.

Author Biography

Francis Fukuyama is Bernard L. Schwartz Professor of International Political Economy at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University.

Table of Contents

Preface	ix
1 The Missing Dimensions of Stateness	1	(42)
The Contested Role of the State	3	(3)
Scope versus Strength	6	(9)
Scope, Strength, and Economic Development	15	(6)
The New Conventional Wisdom	21	(2)
The Supply of Institutions	23	(9)
The Demand for Institutions	32	(7)
Making Things Worse	39	(4)
2 Weak States and the Black Hole of Public Administration	43	(49)
Institutional Economics and the Theory of Organizations	45	(6)
The Ambiguity of Goals	51	(4)
Principals, Agents, and Incentives	55	(12)
Decentralization and Discretion	67	(9)
Losing, and Reinventing, the Wheel	76	(6)
Capacity-Building under Conditions of Organizational Ambiguity: Policy Implications	82	(10)
3 Weak States and International Legitimacy	92	(27)
The New Empire	94	(2)
The Erosion of Sovereignty	96	(3)
Nation-Building	99	(5)
Democratic Legitimacy at an International Level	104	(10)
Beyond the Nation-State	114	(5)
4 Smaller but Stronger	119	(4)
Bibliography	123	(10)
Index	133