Includes bibliographical references (pages 633-666) and index.

Machine generated contents note: pt. 1 PATHOLOGIES AND THREADS OF FAILURE -- 1. Argentina: Living Beyond Means -- 2. Guinea: A Great Balancing Act -- 3. Haiti: 128 Shades of Grey -- 4. Kenya: Off the Rails or Back on Track? -- 5. Nigeria: A Cauldron of Superlatives -- 6. Tunisia: And Other Springs -- 7. Uganda: Kettles, Pots and Land -- 8. Venezuela: An Authoritarian Democratic Playbook -- 9. Zimbabwe: Backwards to Beit Bridge? -- pt. 2 INSTANCES OF INTERVENTION -- 10. Afghanistan: Cycles of War and Aid -- 11. The Democratic Republic of Congo: The Invisible State -- 12. Iraq to Syria: Matching Legitimacy, Strategy and Resources -- 13. Kosovo: Fifteen Years of Building Peace -- 14. Liberia: Mission with a Long Tail? -- 15. Libya After Regime Change: A Michael Jackson State? -- 16. Malawi: A Different Sort of Leadership -- 17. Sierra Leone: Shrugging off Legacy -- 18. Somalia: The World's `Most Failed' State -- pt. 3 ILLUSTRATIONS OF RECOVERY -- 19. Angola: Giving War a Chance.

Contents note continued: 20. Burkina Faso: The Mobylette African Capital -- 21. Burundi and Rwanda: Getting Beyond Tribalism -- 22. Chile to Zambia: Natural Resources -- During and After the Rush -- 23. Colombia: Attention to Detail -- 24. Myanmar: The Roots of Reform -- 25. Singapore: Choices Behind Change -- 26. Somaliland: The Power of Local Ownership -- 27. South Africa: Components for Resolving Conflict -- 28. Vietnam: No Lack of Excuses -- pt. 4 PULLING THE THREADS -- 29. The Prior Question: Why Some States Fail -- 30. The Fragility `Industry': Getting Past Routine Responses -- 31. Confronting Authoritarian Democracy, Managing Identity Politics -- 32. The Quiet Professionals: Aid, Advice and the Art of Recovery -- 33. The Private Sector: Melting the Iceberg and the Zen Master.

State failure takes many forms. Somalia offers one extreme. A collapse of central authority as the outcome of a prolonged civil war, where authority descends into competing factions -- headed by warlords -- around the spoils of local commerce, power and international aid. At the other end of the scale is Malawi. During President Bingu's second term in office, the country's economy collapsed as a result of poor policies and personalised politics. On the surface, save the petrol queues, it was stable; underneath, the polity was fractured, the economy broken. Between these two extremes of state failure are all manner of examples. Drawing on research in more than thirty countries, incorporating interviews with a dozen leaders Mills disaggregates state failure and identifies instances of recovery in Latin America, Asia and Africa. All the while he returns to his key questions: how do countries recover, and what roles ought insiders and outsiders play to aid that process?--Jacket.