Promotional Information

State Death is a pathbreaking study of how and why states 'die' or are eliminated from the international system. Despite previous attention to the issues of war, state emergence and failure, and strategies for success, the phenomenon of state death has not previously received systematic attention. Fazal deserves enormous credit for introducing the discipline of international relations to what should have been a topic of long-standing interest. -- David A. Lake, University of California, San Diego The book is one of the first--and definitely the best--to examine the fundamental question far too oft overlooked: what behavior, exactly, allows states to survive? Fazal tackles an extremely important topic--the causes of 'state death'--which has broad ramifications for competing theoretical frameworks in international relations as well as for policy. I am confident this book will feature on many syllabi for years to come. -- Hein Goemans, University of Rochester

Table of Contents

List of Figures ix List of Tables xi Acknowledgments xiii Chapter 1: Introduction 1 PART I: PATTERNS AND CAUSES Chapter 2: Definitions and Patterns 13 Chapter 3: Location, Location, and Timing 37 PART II: BUFFER STATE DEATH AND SURVIVAL Chapter 4: Quantitative Analysis of State Death 69 Chapter 5: Buffer State Death and Survival Prior to 1945 97 PART III: THE NORM AGAINST CONQUEST AND STATE DEATH AFTER 1945 Chapter 6: Resurrection153 Chapter 7: State Death and Intervention after 1945 169 Chapter 8: Conclusion 229 Appendix A. Revising the Correlates of War List of Members of the Interstate System 243 Appendix B. Variable Coding 259 Bibliography 273 Index 291

About the Author

Tanisha M. Fazal is assistant professor of political science at Columbia University.

Reviews

Winner of the 2008 Best Book Award, Conflict Processes Section of the American Political Science Association "This excellent study begins with the counterintuitive fact that 'of all the states on the map of the world in 1816, nearly half no longer exist today.' The first part of the book details the history of state death, a modest contribution but one heretofore absent from scholarly analysis. More important are the contributions relating to explaining state death and charting the impact of changes in the international system of states... This is a first-rate book with importance for both international relations and geography scholars alike."--P. F. Diehl, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, for Choice "Given the importance of state death to theorizing about international politics, it is surprising that Tanisha Fazal is the first scholar to offer a systematic study of the phenomenon. The wait has been worth it, thought, because Fazal has written an excellent introduction to the topic."--Douglas Lemke, Political Science Quarterly "Fazal outlines a plausible mechanism for state death and supports it with a persuasive combination of statistics and well-executed case studies."--Alexander B. Downes, International History Review "State Death is well written. It is extremely interesting in that it attempts to systematically approach a subject that has barely been thought about in systematic terms to date. Its main strength is its almost textbook-like demonstration of how to approach a subject matter by devising a meticulous methodology, discussing and refining the data sets used, and combining quantitative analysis with qualitative case studies in a fruitful fashion... State Death presents an interesting and valuable argument developed in a methodologically creative way."--Mathias Albert, Perspectives on Politics "The title of the book promises much for scholars of genocide, and not only because it highlights 'state death' with its connotations of violence and ethnic destruction."--A. Dirk Moses, Journal of Genocide Research