ABSTRACT
The central debates about state failure are threefold. The first is the question of whether state failure is really something fundamentally new having only recently emerged out of distinct post-Cold War era problems. This has resulted in the emergence of a large literature on the consequences of state failure and civil war, which we briefly discuss below. The second is in regards to methodological issues of how to define and situate state failure within the larger framework of conflict and development analysis. The third debate centres on the extent to which policy applications should be driven by security and interventionist agendas.
