ABSTRACT
The idea of state, first presented as equal parts nation and organizational ideology, was originally presented as an interesting way of framing the question of what needs to be secured when one talks of national security. The narrowing and conceptualization continued and developed the idea of the state, focusing on nationalism, perceptions of national pride, and identity, as well as the concepts of bonding and bridging social capital. By examining where states place in terms of dominant and second most-dominant dimensions, a striking trend emerges. Falling between nation and society vertices are the South American countries. Positive measurements of state performance are surprisingly difficult to come by. Where poor state performance (PSP) indexes measure the degree to which a state fails to deliver services, state capability indexes (SCIs) measure how well states do this, yet are not as common as PSP indexes.
