The Logic of State Failure: Learning from Late-Century Africa

Abstract

In the last decades of the twentieth century, the rate of civil war and state failure in Africa rose precipitously. In an effort to comprehend the reasons for the rapid rise of political disorder, the author advances a model that isolates the conditions under which rulers will serve as guardians and civilians disarm, arguing that these conditions specify a region within which political order and the state become possible. Using narrative materials and statistical data, the author then tests this argument, and in so doing helps to account for political chaos in late—century Africa.