While it is by now almost impossible to even list the burgeoning literature on “weak” or “failed” states, this book on the death of states is one of the rare attempts to deal with the conditions under which states in fact cease to exist. In a nutshell, the author's main argument is that for states, where you sit determines whether you live or die: At least before the post-1945 solidification of a norm against conquest, whether a state died or not depended primarily upon its geographical location and character as a buffer state between major powers.

In order to pursue this argument, but also to avoid the possible lengthy conceptual debates on the issue, Tanisha M. Fazal adopts a rather straightforward definition of state death “as the formal loss of control over foreign policy to another state” (p. 17). By implication then, regaining formal control over foreign policy would count as state “resurrection.” Both quantitative and qualitative analyses are used in order to test the argument about geography's being the determining factor of state death against alternative (but possibly complementary) explanations: the effects of states' balancing behavior, the effects of international norms and legitimacy on state survival, and a “nationalist” suggestion that states with populations uniting against external interference are most likely to survive.

The book identifies 66 state deaths since 1817. Of these, only nine occurred after 1945, mostly in a nonviolent way (e.g., the German Democratic Republic, the Soviet Union). In a convincing analysis, Fazal shows that whereas state deaths before 1945 are best explained by the geographical location of the dying states as buffers between major powers, the post–World War II era has witnessed the global strengthening of a norm against conquest: While efforts to change regimes and interventions are still frequently encountered, the international community almost universally adheres to a norm not to conquer and formally take over a state (the main exception being the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, which seems to have been based on a profound miscommunication and misreading of this fundamental norm against conquest).

In particular, it is by means of the pre-1945 case studies that Fazal is able to demonstrate that geographic location and buffer-state status are the main factors in explaining state death (Poland, late eighteenth century; Dominican Republic, 1916) and survival (Persia, late nineteenth/early twentieth century; Dominican Republic, 1870)—discounting both the influences of balancing behavior on the part of the dying/surviving state and the commitment to resist on the part of its population. Although the geographic factor is relaxed somewhat in the case of the Dominican Republic, the argument is still convincing throughout the case studies that neither balancing nor nationalist resistance account for state survival or death. The story of post-1945 state deaths, but particularly the story of post-1945 state survivals and resurrections, is the story of the universal acceptance of the norm against conquest: “Because no other explanation for the post-1945 turn away from violent state death predicts the shift from conquest to intervention … the rise of a norm against conquest has in fact been an important cause of the decline in violent state death” (p. 228).

State Death is well written. It is extremely interesting in that it attempts to systematically approach a subject that has barely been thought about in systematic terms to date. Its main strength is its almost textbook-like demonstration of how to approach a subject matter by devising a meticulous methodology, discussing and refining the data sets used, and combining quantitative analysis with qualitative case studies in a fruitful fashion. A particularly refreshing feature of this probe of what is basically an empirical argument is that the author does not spend too much time discussing theoretical intricacies as to whether, for example, a “realist” hypothesis on balancing can be neatly tested next to a “constructivist” argument about international legitimacy.

That said, however, the book also suffers from a number of significant shortcomings. The first actually stems from one of the book's strengths, that is, its carefully crafted case studies: The case study on Poland, for example, goes to great lengths to demonstrate that the vulnerability of what was a great power not long before the end of the eighteenth century could, in fact, be attributed to domestic weaknesses. Such observations within the case studies, and also the fact that of the 66 state deaths identified approximately a third can be attributed to the consolidation of but three nation-states (Germany, Italy, India), could be used to question the legitimacy of the exercise to generalize across what in the end remains a fairly limited number of cases with a significant geographic and historical spread. Admittedly, throwing open this question would have required the author to engage with more fundamental questions regarding the structure of and changes within the modern system of states. This would then certainly also have required an engagement with the recent debates about the legitimacy of seeing states as persons (which can die, be reborn, resurrected, etc.). However, whereas addressing these quite far-reaching conceptual issues might have been beyond the scope of the book's argument pursued, I found it particularly surprising that the author managed to completely avoid the (traditional and critical) literature on geopolitics, while at the same time making what is in essence one of the most classical geopolitical arguments—that location matters and, in fact, reigns primary.

State Death presents an interesting and valuable argument developed in a methodologically creative way. At the same time, it would be interesting to see how in her future work, the author is able to relate her study to established traditions of geopolitical thought.