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The Washington Post - Sebastian Mallaby

… regardless of whether you agree with him, Fukuyama is a wonderful synthesizer of grand subjects, an adventurer who doesn't mind summing up the history of development theory in one chapter and the history of organizational theory in the next. He pulls this off with minimal resort to jargon, and he pulls the reader along with him. I look forward to more books.

Publishers Weekly

This slim volume, derived from lectures Fukuyama presented at Cornell in 2003, picks up one of the loose threads from his decade-old The End of History and the Last Man. He asserts that the lack of "organizational tradition" in "failed or weak" nations such as Afghanistan and Haiti represents the greatest threat to an orderly world. He argues that the United States, and the West in general, after rightly intervening in such states either militarily or economically (most often through the IMF or World Bank), have failed to transfer institutional and public- and private-sector know-how to needy countries. The goal is to "create self-sustaining state institutions that can survive the withdrawal of outside intervention," though Fukuyama acknowledges that the developed world has failed, setting people up for "large disappointments." The author quickly surveys other recent theories-Sen, Kagan, Huntington-and concludes that the answer lies in providing states with internal organizational structure and, above all, with a culture that enables strong leaders and government institutions to enforce capitalist and free-market values. Since he sees the "international community" represented by the United Nations as a myth because it lacks a military, the mantle of leadership must be worn by the U.S., at great risk to itself. While Fukuyama's ideas will no doubt be much discussed, parts of this book are too technical to appeal to a broad readership. Agent, Esther Newberg at ICM. (May) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Foreign Affairs

Weak and failed states have always been a feature of the modern state system, but the West has typically either ignored them or engaged them as humanitarian crises. In a globalized age in which terrorism, crime, and disease know no boundaries, they have become a first-order international issue. In this short, sobering book, Fukuyama provides the most succinct and lucid consideration of this challenge yet to appear, and his message is not optimistic. Policy experts have vigorously debated the proper scope of the state, but there has been much less attention to the strength or capacity of the state-the government's ability to maintain law and order and protect property rights. Fukuyama thus notes the missteps and misunderstandings of the international development community, which has only recently embraced the obvious: that stable and well-functioning political institutions are a precondition for economic advancement. His more important argument, however, is that outside actors have little ability to help countries strengthen their state capacity-and often pursue policies that actually weaken political institutions. On the other hand, he suggests that, in some of the most severe cases, the only option is a return to a neocolonial or mandate system, but such steps clash with current global norms of sovereignty.

• Table of Contents

Table of Contents