Today between forty and sixty nations, home to more
than one billion people, have either collapsed or are
teetering on the brink of failure. The world's worst
problems--terrorism, drugs and human trafficking,
absolute poverty, ethnic conflict, disease,
genocide--originate in such states, and the
international community has devoted billions of dollars
to solving the problem. Yet by and large the effort has
not succeeded. Ashraf Ghani and Clare Lockhart have
taken an active part in the effort to save failed states
for many years, serving as World Bank officials, as
advisers to the UN, and as high-level participants in
the new government of Afghanistan. In Fixing Failed
States, they describe the issue--vividly and
convincingly--offering an on-the-ground picture of why
past efforts have not worked and advancing a
groundbreaking new solution to this most pressing of
global crises. For the paperback edition, they have
added a new preface that addresses the continuing crisis
in light of ongoing governance problems in weak states
like Afghanistan and the global financial recession.As
they explain, many of these countries already have the
resources they need, if only we knew how to connect them
to global knowledge and put them to work in the right
way. Their state-building strategy, which assigns
responsibility equally among the international
community, national leaders, and citizens, maps out a
clear path to political and economic stability. The
authors provide a practical framework for achieving
these ends, supporting their case with first-hand
examples of struggling territories such as Afghanistan,
Sudan, Kosovo and Nepal as well as the world's success
stories--Singapore, Ireland, and even the American
South. |
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