Why States Recover : Changing Walking Societies into Winning Nations, from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe.

Cover -- Half-title -- Title -- Copyright -- Contents -- About the Author -- Acknowledgements -- Introduction -- PART 1: PATHOLOGIES AND THREADS OF FAILURE -- 1 Argentina: Living Beyond Means -- Cry for me -- Peronist, pliant and pernicious -- 2 Guinea: A Great Balancing Act -- Realising enormous wealth -- The cost of bad politics -- Arriveés de junta -- The growth plan -- No mission impossible? -- A long and winding road -- 3 Haiti: 128 Shades of Grey -- Green and brown -- Up and down, black and white -- Rolling success next door -- Haiti's aid business -- Bridging the humanitarian-development divide -- The underlying reasons of failure -- 4 Kenya: Off the Rails or Back on Track? -- Another walking society -- The railway metaphor -- On track for Mombasa -- Political not rocket science -- Every person a politician -- 5 Nigeria: A Cauldron of Superlatives -- Oil junkies -- Endemic poverty -- Letting the people down -- Richer without oil? -- Never expect power always -- Leadership's second chance: Olusegun Obasanjo -- Failure, but … -- 6 Tunisia: And Other Springs -- At the heart, political and economic freedoms -- Spring in their step? -- Avoiding an African Spring -- 7 Uganda: Kettles, Pots and Land -- Alice in Wonderland -- A post-liberation insurgency -- The role of agriculture -- Infrastructure, infrastructure, infrastructure -- 8 Venezuela: An Authoritarian Democratic Playbook -- A brief history of elitism -- The Cuban playbook -- The necessity of conflict as a political tool -- The socialist petroleum revolution -- Short-termism and patronage -- Good night at the mausoleum -- 9 Zimbabwe: Backwards to Beit Bridge? -- What causes economies to get stuck and collapse? -- Elections as war by other means -- Backwards or … forwards to Beit Bridge? -- PART 2: INSTANCES OF INTERVENTION -- 10 Afghanistan: Cycles of War and Aid -- Cycles of war and aid.

Come the Taliban -- Crouching tiger, hidden dragon, frère ennemi? -- The wrong analysis -- Summarising the transitions -- Déjà vu all over again? -- Similarities -- Differences -- Lessons -- Working on the basics -- Afghanistan's aid lessons for others -- A view from the trenches -- A little extra ammo and a few other things -- A good future outcome -- 11 The Democratic Republic of Congo: The Invisible State -- Systemic governance failure -- Election deficits and myths -- Few innocents -- 12 Iraq to Syria: Matching Legitimacy, Strategy and Resources -- The shadow of war -- Winning the war, losing the peace -- Iraq to Syria: Knowing then, knowing now -- Strategy not politics -- Heed the past -- 13 Kosovo: Fifteen Years of Building Peace -- The challenge before Kosovo and the international community -- Shitet: What has intervention achieved? -- Armies of expats -- True grit -- The rule of law link -- Reflecting on intervention -- 14 Liberia: Mission with a Long Tail? -- Some things stay the same -- From war to peace -- Tackling the challenges -- Signs of success or failure? -- Mission with a long tail? -- 15 Libya After Regime Change: A Michael Jackson State? -- The backdrop -- Challenges and advantages -- Economic rent-seeking and redistribution -- Lessons from the international post-conflict campaign -- Not a failed state, but … -- 16 Malawi: A Different Sort of Leadership -- A pernicious political economy getting worse? -- Crowding out -- System change -- 17 Sierra Leone: Shrugging off Legacy -- Background -- The UN's involvement and British engagement -- The sequel -- An ongoing process -- Two possible scenarios, good and bad -- Helping countries to help themselves -- More than downsides, shrugging off legacy -- 18 Somalia: The World's 'Most Failed' State -- AMISOM: An African success story in Somalia -- A recent history of collapse.

The battle for Mogadishu and Black Hawk Down -- Pushing out Al-Shabab -- Parallel politics -- Causes of conflict -- The ingrained clan system -- Failed, not entirely broken -- Success depends on Somalis -- Changing the incentives -- PART 3: ILLUSTRATIONS OF RECOVERY -- 19 Angola: Giving War a Chance -- Peacemaking in the 1990s -- Do no harm -- The UN option -- Political choices -- A short economic history -- Much has changed -- 20 Burkina Faso: The Mobylette African Capital -- The road less travelled -- A regional escape act -- Only up from Upper Volta -- Not everything is rosy -- 21 Burundi and Rwanda: Getting Beyond Tribalism -- Swallowing Burundi's bitter pill of ethnicity -- Burundi's vicious cycle -- The cost of progress -- Rwanda: Hell in a small place -- Might Rwanda have done better? -- The Congo domestication -- Finding a better way? -- 22 Chile to Zambia: Natural Resources - During and After the Rush -- The Kimberley story -- Namibia's forbidden areas -- Botswana's challenge beyond diamonds -- The Chile transformation -- The Zambian comparison -- From big holes to better fortunes -- 23 Colombia: Attention to Detail -- A brief history of violence -- The elements of democratic security -- Someone's in charge -- Reflections of the man: Álvaro Uribe -- Back to La Gabarra - and the future -- Breaking the conflict-poverty cycle -- 24 Myanmar: The Roots of Reform -- The backdrop to change -- From colonialism to isolation -- Seeding the Saffron Revolution -- Three signposts for the future -- Teachings -- 25 Singapore: Choices Behind Change -- Outlining contemporary lessons -- The experience of leadership -- 26 Somaliland: The Power of Local Ownership -- Out and in then out again -- No honey, no swarm -- 27 South Africa: Components for Resolving Conflict -- Mandela's special qualities -- Needing a dance partner -- Three necessary components.

Avoiding mythology -- 28 Vietnam: No Lack of Excuses -- No shortage of devastation -- Using aid well -- Putting people first -- PART 4: PULLING THE THREADS -- 29 The Prior Question: Why Some States Fail -- The drivers of under-performance and failure -- Society and politics -- The Asian authoritarian excuse -- The political economy of state failure -- 30 The Fragility 'Industry': Getting Past Routine Responses -- Two schools -- The absence of strategy -- A longer-term view -- 31 Confronting Authoritarian Democracy, Managing Identity Politics -- The sophistication of authoritarian democrats -- Resisting their rise -- Opposition ownership of the solution -- Managing the politics of liberation and identity -- 32 The Quiet Professionals: Aid, Advice and the Art of Recovery -- Theories of change -- The nature of the challenge -- The conflict-prosperity cycle -- Truck on -- How the aid world is changing -- Five steps to more effective aid -- Getting under the iceberg -- The search for quiet professionals -- 33 The Private Sector: Melting the Iceberg and the Zen Master -- Stopping fighting -- Cementing stability -- Melting the iceberg -- Undoing illicit networks -- Private sector donor alignment -- Moving along the recovery spectrum -- From emergency to transformation - managing elites -- Conclusion: Buy, Hold, Fix -- State failure -- No state at home -- Democratic failure -- Buy, hold, fix -- Notes -- Index.

First major book to counter "doom and gloom" thesis on state failure and inability of outside parties to put things right, arguing that broken states can be fixed -- and for the long term.

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, Michigan : ProQuest Ebook Central, 2024. Available via World Wide Web. Access may be limited to ProQuest Ebook Central affiliated libraries.