Failed states have proliferated in the last 15 years. For much of this time Robert Rotberg has played a major role in defining debates about this development. His latest edited volume is a collection of 14 essays that examine why states fail and what to do about them once they fail. Most of the contributors are political scientists. A few are experts in conflict management and have worked directly in international efforts to remedy state failure.

All of the contributors agree that the essence of state failure lies in the loss of government capacities to control the exercise of coercion in their societies. This creates a distinctive kind of political system. Borrowing concepts from the study of international relations, such as anarchy, security dilemmas, and the evolution of cooperation, the contributors show how politics in failed states really works. For those concerned with remedies, the task is thus defined as coordinating cooperation. While cognizant of individual cases, this approach provides a general framework for comparison. In this pursuit, several of the authors focus on distinctions between organizations that provide public goods and those only serving the private interests of members. This is useful for distinguishing between failure and order, since it connects the exercise of violence to very different sets of social relationships. Such distinctions are critical for some of the chapters on state reconstruction that look beyond the capacity, level of violence, or size of some groups to ask instead whether they are capable of providing social order or whether they serve the interests of a small group of members.

Several of the chapters that focus on the internal politics of failed states borrow directly from international relations theories. The best is Nelson Kasfir's superb essay on cooperation amidst anarchy. Other scholars have referred to security dilemmas to explain why groups assume offensive intent among other groups who simply may be trying to fend off the worst effects of general mayhem. Kasfir observes that for security dilemmas to function, groups have to be fairly coordinated in their actions. But the abundant opportunities for predation in failed states lower the cost of entry into this mini-system, compared to the global system. Thus, leaders of these groups face serious difficulties in controlling followers. This undermines agreements with other groups and promotes fragmentation. Kasfir also recognizes that the groups that emerge out of predation and those emerging out of security dilemmas differ in their internal logics. The former usually pursues private interests and is prone to fragmentation, while the latter tends to provide more public goods.

Most of the eight chapters on responses to state failure focus on strategies to restore order. They prescribe ways to create legal cultures and to disarm combatants once fighting stops. This is useful in many instances, although when states have failed entirely or are very weak, it is difficult for well-meaning foreigners to find any institutional structures on which to build. Several contributors shift the focus to the positive roles that indigenous societal organizations can play. Daniel Posner, however, provides an intelligent caveat. Beware of aid to advocacy groups, he warns, as these are poor at coordinating action among members. Better to assist groups that already furnish services that enfeebled states cannot provide. On the one hand, this is a tricky proposition, as some of these groups are likely to promote distinctly nonliberal ideals, such as armed protection of a cultural or ethnic community. On the other hand, Posner observes that advocacy groups account for the many “fake NGOs” that emerge around the promise of foreign aid and really just provide employment for core organizers who are adept at telling the foreigners what they want to hear in exchange for a salary.

Two controversial and lively chapters are those by Christopher Clapham and Jeffrey Herbst. Clapham offers the unsettling proposition that state failure actually reflects the inability of many societies, especially in Africa, to accommodate statelike political structures. The individualism and clan politics of pastoral societies, for example, is good at dealing with survival and the need for shifting alliances when on the move in sparsely populated areas. It is poorly suited to the large-scale organizations needed to run states. Thus it may be that people in many failed states are reverting to a nonstate form of governance, and that “restoring” effective states requires social revolution and not simply restoring a status quo ante.

Herbst's suggestion that the international community ought to decertify failed states and not attempt to rebuild them in their old form is another variant of the idea that state failure is part of a deeper structural process. An implication of his suggestion is that new states could arise on the ashes of the old. But if Clapham is correct, prolonged statelessness will follow state failure, at least in some places. Add to that Michael Klare's chapter, which tells readers how the presence of small arms and the predatory opportunities in global clandestine trades may increase pressures to fragmentation and extend instability to neighboring regions. Thus, decertification raises the problem of what comes next in a world where stability is desirable. Both chapters throw down interesting challenges for the study of international relations, as they suggest that the structure of the state system itself is significantly frayed on its edges.

In this regard, it is surprising that the issue of protectorate status does not appear more often. Only Jens Meier Henrich argues for international conservatorship to create new administrations. If the problem of state failure is really deeply entrenched in the political and social structures of these countries, the need for semipermanent military and financial oversight may not be far-fetched. Drawn-out interventions in places like Sierra Leone, Congo, Afghanistan, Kosovo, and now (recently broken) Iraq suggests that the quick revival of failed states is overly optimistic. But protectorates—witness Iraq—have their problems, too. Failed states are a problem indeed, and When States Fail sheds light on this still understudied subject.