On the face of it, it is puzzling that more states do not simply fall apart. Why do their components not fly off in a thousand different directions? It has happened to some in recent years: Lebanon, Yugoslavia, Somalia, Liberia, Zaire, even the vaunted Soviet Union. Why not to others? What can account for the staying power of so many state organizations, most with tens of thousands of workers toiling in hundreds of different agencies with countless sets of varying procedures, goals, interests, pressures, and incentives? All these are scattered across variegated territories with diverse populations. The potential for interagency turmoil, mad grabs for scarce resources, forces pulling in different directions, contestation of internalized global forces, and conflicting priorities seems endless – and all that in an organization harboring the feasibility for inflicting tremendous violence.

Surveying European expansion across five centuries, David Strang found remarkable ability of non-European polities – at least those that were recognized as sovereign – to survive. He found only eleven that went from sovereign to dependent status between 1415 and 1987, and fifteen non-European polities that merged or underwent dissolution. What was striking about the last half of the twentieth century was how many states were created – unprecedented numbers in the annals of world history – and how few disappeared, dissolved, or imploded.

In fact, during the years of the Cold War, one is hard pressed to point to more than a handful of cases in which states vanish or fall apart – perhaps Pakistan and Nigeria for a spell, certainly Lebanon, and then some odd instances such as Egypt, Syria, and the United Arab Republic.