Why States Recover

State failure takes many forms. Somalia offers one extreme. A collapse of central authority as the outcome of a prolonged civil war, authority descending into competing factions - warlords - around the spoils of local commerce, power and international aid. At the other end of the scale is Malawi under President Bingu.
During his abbreviated second term in office, the country's economy collapsed as a result of poor policies and personalised politics. On the surface, save the petrol queues, it was stable; underneath the polity was fractured and the economy broken.
Between these two extremes of state failure are all manner of examples. This book uses a nuanced case-study approach to disaggregate various state failures - including Afghanistan, Congo, Sierra Leone, Somalia/Somaliland, Malawi, Zimbabwe and El Salvador - focusing on one critical dimension of state recovery - the economy, and guided by the question: How should the international community best intervene in the economic realm in fragile states to offer the best chance of stability and recovery?