State weakness"" is seen to be a widespread problem throughout Central Asia and other parts of the former Soviet Union, but also is often found more broadly in the developing/post-colonial world.  It is typically characterized by widespread corruption, unrestrained power of oligarchs, ineffectual services, poor protection for human rights or even basic policing, etc. This volume focuses on cases in Eurasia, mostly in Central Asia, but also including Ukraine and Russia and even a comparison case from Africa. This results in a volume that tackles a fundamental concept in political theory in an important regional context, but with the meaningful inclusion of a wider context. The contributors are both building toward a new general theory of state weakness and deepening our understanding of the phenomenon in Eurasia, which makes this a valuable volume.

“State weakness” is typically characterized by widespread corruption, unrestrained power of oligarchs, ineffectual services, poor protection for human rights or even basic policing. This volume tackles this fundamental concept in political theory in an important regional context, but with the meaningful inclusion of a wider context.