The Myth of International Order: Why Weak States Persist and Alternatives to the State Fade Away

The Myth of International Order: Why Weak States Persist and Alternatives to the State Fade Away This ambitious book takes on a fundamental political puzzle: most states in the international system are 'weak' states, states unable to monopolize violence or provide public goods, and yet the nation-state remains the primary organizational form for world politics. In addressing this, Arjun Chowdhury shows why states everywhere face popular dissatisfaction with their performance, and why addressing this dissatisfaction - through institutional alternatives to the state like the European Union, or through higher taxation - is so difficult. In February of 2011, Libyan citizens rebelled against Muammar Qaddafi and quickly unseated him. The speed of the regime's collapse confounded many observers, and the ensuing civil war showed Foreign Policy's index of failed states to be deeply flawed--FP had, in 2010, identified 110 states as being more likely than Libya to descend into chaos. They were spectacularly wrong, but this points to a larger error in conventional foreign policy wisdom: failed, or weak and unstable, states are not anomalies but are instead in the majority. More states resemble Libya than Sweden.Why are most states weak and unstable? Taking as his launching point Charles Tilly's famous dictum that 'war made the state, and the state made war,' Arjun Chowdhury argues that the problem lies in our mistaken equation of democracy and economic power with stability. But major wars are the true source of stability: only the existential crisis that such wars produced could lead citizens to willingly sacrifice the resources that allowed the state to build the capacity it needed for survival. Developing states in the postcolonial era never experienced the demands major interstate war placed on European states, and hence citizens in those nations have been unwilling to sacrifice the resources that would build state capacity. For example, India and Mexico are established democracies with large economies. Despite their indices of stability, both countries are far from sta Autor: Arjun (Assistant Professor of Political Science Chowdhury Wydawnictwo: Oxford University Press Rok wydania: 2018 Okładka: twarda Liczba stron: 272 Wymiary: 16.3 x 23.6 x 2 cm Język: angielski ISBN: 9780190686710