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This article provides a critique of the discourse of ‘failed states’ and outlines an alternative approach to studying state formation. It is argued that through its taking the model of the modern state for granted, and analysing all states in terms of their degree of correspondence with or deviation from this model, the failed states discourse does not help us understand the nature of the states in question or the processes that lead to strong or weak states. It is suggested that the idea of the modern state should be treated as a category of practice rather than as a category of analysis. State formation could then be analysed by focusing on the interrelationship between the idea of the state and actual state practices, and on both the ways in which states have become linked to domestic society and their relations with the external world.

Capacity development in fragile environments in Africa has often proven to be a complex undertaking. This has largely been because of existing knowledge gaps on what exactly causes fragility of states, the economy and society. The liberal peace development model that generally informs post‐conflict reconstruction and capacity development has a limited conception of fragility by narrowly focusing on the national dimensions of the problem, promoting donor‐driven solutions, emphasizing minimal participation of beneficiary actors in the identification and prioritization of capacity development needs, and by subcontracting the design and management of projects and programs. The resulting capacity development impact has generally been disappointing. In the absence of homegrown strategic plans, stakeholder participation and ownership, international development partners have all too often addressed capacity gaps by financing training, supply of equipment and professional exchanges of parliamentarians and parliamentary staffers. These efforts usually achieved their presumed number targets but tended to ignore addressing the larger issues of political economy within which capacity development take place. However, the recent re‐conceptualization of parliamentary capacity development as a development of nationally owned, coordinated, harmonized, and aligned development activities seems to be gaining growing attention in Africa. As the experience of Rwanda eloquently demonstrates, capacity development is essentially about politics, economics and power, institutions and incentives, habits and attitudes – factors that are only partly susceptible to technical fixes and quantitative specifications. These structural factors have to be negotiated carefully and tactfully.

Presents two models. Model I deals with some characteristics of a single unit system with a sensing device and two types of repairmen. The unit is attached to a sensing device which completely monitors the operating or non‐operating status of the unit. The regular repairman is always available with the system and inspects the operation of the sensing device. If the device is not working, then an expert repairman is called to the system and the operational status of the unit is now monitored by the expert repairman. It is assumed that the failure of the unit, repair of the regular, expert and the status of the sensing device are stochastically independent random variables each having an arbitrary distribution. Several important results have been derived including profit with some applications. In model II, a two‐unit cold standby system with pre‐inspection is considered. In this model, first the regular repairman inspects every unit that fails to ascertain whether he is able to repair it or not. If he can repair it, he proceeds; otherwise an expert repairman is called. An analytical approach to find the optimum interchanging time of units by giving rest to the operative unit is obtained.

Chieftaincies constructed of personal power networks emerge recurrently within states and their business corporations, political parties, mafias, insurgencies and artistic cliques. Modern states were built by incorporating chieftaincies as internal organs. Nevertheless, ‘neopatrimonialism’, ‘political machines’, ‘oligarchy’, caudillismo and warlordism – the various names that designate different facets of chieftaincy – represent neither aberrant nor atavistic phenomena. They refer to an immensely adaptable strategy of manipulation in arenas where formal institutional controls prove impractical or undesirable.

Roots of global Terrorism are in ‘failed’ states carved out of multiracial empires after World Wars I and II in name of ‘national self‐determination’. Both sides in the Cold War competed to exploit the process of disintegration with armed and covert interventions. In effect, they were colluding at the expense of the ‘liberated’ peoples. The ‘Vietnam Trauma’ prevented effective action against the resulting terrorist buildup and blowback until 9/11. As those vultures come home to roost, the war broadens to en vision overdue but coercive reforms to the postwar system of nation states, first in the Middle East. Mirages of Vietnam blur the vision; can the sole Superpower finish the job before fiscal and/or imperial overstretch implode it?

There is an emerging consensus within the literature on failed and failing states that state failure is contagious across borders. For its part, the literature on regionalisation claims that states within the same region tend to form clusters of security – or insecurity – so that geographical proximity is closely associated with inert security relationships. This article – along with the individual contributions in the volume it introduces – seeks to bridge these two literatures, which otherwise rarely talk to each other. The approach taken throughout the volume is largely qualitative and case-oriented, yet methodologically diverse, while the articles have a shared comparative ambition. This introductory article examines the debate on failing states and contextualises the volume's contributions within that debate. It then does the same in relation to the debate on regional security, before moving on to examine the role and impact of emerging regional responses to insecurity. When we examine recent state-building initiatives, the effectiveness of external actors seems limited, while existing power holders – and the conflicts between them – are at the centre in processes for building states. This calls for studying the practice of state-building, and for rooting policies in viable practices, even when the driving actors are not inherently benign. To a considerable degree, a state's strength and functionality are relational: the state can only be understood in relation to significant other states. Within regions, hegemonic states – and the strategies pursued by other states in their efforts to cooperate with, balance, or counter the hegemon – have major implications for security. Regional cooperation emerges through concrete collaboration to address commonly perceived challenges, at times as an unintended effect of a targeted initiative. Key actors – and the networks of which they form part – are often transnational, spanning the borders of several states. The behaviour of transnational actors, how they interface with the system of states and regions and the potential for their conversion into constructive political forces remain poorly understood. As a whole, these are findings that inspire an agenda for future research at the interface between the state and the region.

This paper aims to examine the characteristics of banks that were the target of intervention in the form of bailout or failure during the financial crisis and, of those subjected to intervention, what characteristics distinguish those that received bailout funds from those that were deemed failures.

The study estimates a series of logit regressions in an effort to identify the causes of regulatory intervention while controlling for bank-level characteristics and the economic and regulatory environment.

The empirical results indicate that many of the same characteristics associated with banks receiving bailout funds are similar to the characteristics associated with failed banks. However, non-performing loans increased the likelihood of failure, but reduced the likelihood of a bank receiving Capital Purchase Program (CPP) funds, suggesting that regulatory authorities discriminated in their use of CPP funds based on the quality of a bank’s asset portfolio. Further, those banks located in states with limits on de novo branching and those banks that are part of a multi-bank holding company structure were less likely to fail but were more likely to receive CPP funds.

This paper provides a comprehensive analysis of regulatory intervention in the banking industry during the late 2000s financial crisis and the impact of different banking organizational structures, economic circumstances, and financial fragility on the likelihood of a bank failing or receiving bailout funds.

The purpose of this paper is to study repairable consecutive‐k‐out‐of‐n: systems with r repairmen and a sensing device.

The system can either be a circular C(k, n: G) system or a linear C(k, n: G) system. The working time and the repair time of each component in the system and the sensor detection time are exponentially distributed. Every component after repair is perfect. Each component is classified as either a key component, or an ordinary one according to its priority role to system's repair. A sensing device is introduced to detect the failure of each component in the system in advance and completion of repair of components. If the repair is completed, the sensor will send the component to standby according to its priority. The state transition probabilities of the system are derived using the definition of generalized transition probability. To obtain the reliability and availability Laplace transform techniques have been used.

The Kolmogorov‐Feller forward equations are derived for both linear and circular systems. Reliability and MTTF of both the systems are derived using Laplace transforms. Numerical examples are given in detail to demonstrate the theoretical results and these verify the validity of the studied system.

A consecutive‐k‐out‐of‐n system consists of a sequence of n‐ordered components along a line or a circle such that the system is good if and only if at least k consecutive components in the system are good. Each component in the system is classified as key component or ordinary component according to its priority in system functioning. By using a sensing device the failure can be detected in advance.

This study indicates that by using a sensing device we can detect the failure in advance. Thus, the reliability and MTTF of the system can be improved.

The purpose of this paper is to study the combined effect of human error, common‐cause failure, redundancy, and maintenance policies on the performance of a system composed of three‐state devices.

Generalized expressions for time‐dependent and steady state availability of a generalized maintainable three‐state device parallel system subjected to human errors and common‐cause failures are developed in the paper under two maintenance policies: Type I repair policy (i.e. only the completely failed system is repaired); and Type II repair policy (i.e. both partially and completely failed system is repaired). The Markov method is used to develop general and special case expressions for state probabilities, and system time‐dependent and steady state availabilities.

In the case of three‐state devices, it is demonstrated that by increasing the number of redundant devices in parallel do not necessarily lead to the improvement in the system availability. In fact, the availability of the system depends significantly on the dominant failure mode of the devices (i.e. short‐mode or open‐mode). When comparing the effect of maintenance policies on the system availability, it is observed that the Type II repair policy does not lead to an improvement in the system availability. Furthermore, it is observed that both human error and common‐cause failure independently lead to lower system availability.

This study will help maintenance engineers and reliability practitioners to become aware of the combined impact of redundancy, human error, common‐cause failure, and maintenance policies on the performance of the three‐state device systems. Consequently, they will make better maintenance related decisions in organizations such as oil refineries and power stations that use three state devices quite extensively.

Most of the past models have independently studied the effects of redundancy, human error, and common‐cause failure on maintainable system made up of three‐state devices. This effort is one of the first attempts to study the combined effects of all these factors in a parallel system composed of three state devices.

Informed by the literature on regional security and fragile states, ‘new regionalisms’, and natural resources and violent conflict, this essay investigates the challenges of state-building in West Africa. These range from the influence of diasporas and subregional strongmen to flows of small arms and light weapons (SALWs) and lootable natural resources. The analytical framework that links patron–client networks and lootable natural resources is applied to the cases of Sierra Leone and Côte d’Ivoire. In recent years, strategies by African leaders to co-opt subregional strongmen as part of patronage networks have failed. The essay finds that an ossified state presence and the erosion of a leader's influence enables subregional strongmen to gain control over valuable natural resources, such as diamonds. The essay then assesses the impact of the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme (KPCS) on state-building, concluding that although international regimes like the KPCS can increase state capacity and thereby counter the deleterious effects of state failure, they are not sufficient state-building tools. Hence, the KPCS must be supplemented through a combination of more explicit state-building initiatives under the auspices of bilateral government donors, aid agencies, diasporas and transnational and local NGOs.