The political economy of state failure

State failure is more common than generally assumed and often has distinctly negative consequences that may manifest themselves in neighboring countries. For this reason, it has attracted considerable attention in academic and policy circles alike. The researchers exploring the phenomenon have followed a rather narrow path, however, and there is substantial scope to broaden the breadth of inquiry. While the analytical efforts over the past decade to come to grips with the phenomenon of state failure have borne fruit in terms of identifying the key independent variables, the understanding of the mechanism through which they exert their influence on the dependent variable has not been significantly enhanced. The assertion is particularly valid with respect to adverse and abrupt regime transitions. The purpose of this paper is to examine, in light of the author's experience in grappling with state failure in the Chinese context, the potential for systematically expanding the research agenda in a conceptual/theoretical direction.