The threat of terror, which flares in Africa and Indonesia, has given the problem of failed states an unprecedented immediacy and importance. In the past, failu

Conventional wisdom among policymakers in both the US and Europe holds that weak and failing states are the source of the world's most pressing security threats

Why do many Asian, African, and Latin American states have such difficulty in directing the behavior of their populations--in spite of the resources at their di

Social science.

Former Brookings Senior Fellow Susan E. Rice spearheads an investigation of the connections between poverty and fragile states and the implications for American