This book situates state failure and state collapse in historical context and explains the structures and forces that have led to state collapse in a number of countries around the world. It also analyses and critiques contemporary interventions and reconstruction efforts in collapsed states.

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• Addresses the subject of state failure which has received high-profile attention from both scholars and policy-makers.
  
• Examines how and why states collapse.
  
• Analyses and critiques post-conflict reconstruction efforts.
  
• Has contemporary relevance for developments in places such as East Timor, Afghanistan, Nigeria and Georgia.
  
• Challenges our assumptions about states and the state system.

Jennifer Milliken is Assistant Professor at the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva. She is the author of The Social Construction of the Korean War: Conflict and its Possibilities (2001).