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Frontmatter -- Contents -- Preface -- 1. The Missing Dimensions of Stateness -- Introduction -- The Contested Role of the State -- Scope versus Strength -- Scope, Strength, and Economic Development -- The New Conventional Wisdom -- The Supply of Institutions -- The Demand for Institutions -- Making Things Worse -- 2. Weak States and the Black Hole of Public Administration -- Introduction -- Institutional Economics and the Theory of Organizations -- The Ambiguity of Goals -- Principals, Agents, and Incentives -- Decentralization and Discretion -- Losing, and Reinventing, the Wheel -- Capacity-Building under Conditions of Organizational Ambiguity: Policy Implications -- 3. Weak States and International Legitimacy -- Introduction -- The New Empire -- The Erosion of Sovereignty -- Nation-Building -- Democratic Legitimacy at an International Level -- Beyond the Nation-State -- 4. Smaller but Stronger -- Bibliography -- Index

Nations are not trapped by their pasts, but events that happened hundreds or even thousands of years ago continue to exert huge influence on present-day politics. If we are to understand the politics that we now take for granted, we need to understand its origins. Francis Fukuyama examines the paths that different societies have taken to reach their current forms of political order. This book starts with the very beginning of mankind and comes right up to the eve of the French and American revolutions, spanning such diverse disciplines as economics, anthropology and geography. The Or

"Focuses on developing analytical tools to anticipate and manage low-probability events. Addresses psychological and institutional obstacles preventing planning for low-probability tragedies and allocating necessary resources. Pinpoints failures---institutional and personal---that allowed events to surprise leaders and examines philosophies and methodologies of forecasting. Discusses low-probability, high-impact contingencies in various sectors"--Provided by publisher

Principles and prudence -- The neoconservative legacy -- Threat, risk, and preventive war -- American exceptionalism and international legitimacy -- Social engineering and the problem of development -- Rethinking institutions for world order -- A different kind of American foreign policy.

Introduction: Nation-building and the failure of institutional memory / Francis Fukuyama -- From consensus to crisis : the postwar career of nation-building in U.S. foreign relations / David Ekbladh -- Nation-building in the heyday of the classic development ideology : Ford Foundation experience in the 1950s and 1960s / Francis X. Sutton -- Building nations : the American experience / Minxin Pei, Samia Amin, and Seth Garz -- Nation-building : lessons learned and unlearned / Michèle A. Flournoy -- Sovereignty and legitimacy in Afghan nation-building / S. Frederick Starr -- Rebuilding Afghanistan : impediments, lessons, and prospects / Marvin G. Weinbaum -- The lessons of nation-building in Afghanistan / Larry P. Goodson -- What went wrong and right in Iraq / Larry Diamond -- Striking out in Baghdad : how postconflict reconstruction went awry / Johanna Mendelson Forman -- Learning the lessons of Iraq / James Dobbins -- Guidelines for future nation-builders / Francis Fukuyama.