The world is becoming more geopolitically unstable and uncertain. Not just because of the proliferation of anocracies. There's another very important phenomenon which is failed states. Failed states is a very different situation than anocracy. A failed state is a situation in which central authority is weak or non-existent. So the government has lost control over law and order in part or all of the territory, and it can no longer provide minimal public services. And cannot interact with other states as part of the international community. In other words, we have a situation in which there is chaos, anarchy, lawlessness. Let me share with you a map that shows you the prevalence of state failure in the world and also show you the evolution over time with the help of a chart. The data come from The Center for Systemic Peace that calculates, in a very complex way, a scale or an indicator of a state failurefor different parts of the world, taking into account ethnic and revolutionary wars, genocides, politicides, and the breakdown of authority. First, let's take a look at the chart. It shows us the evolution of the state failure in the world, in terms of the number of countries that are classified as failed states. The Center for Systemic Peace uses a three-way classification, ranging from serious to high, and to extreme cases of a state failure. If we add up all of those cases of countries that are classified as failed states, then we get an overall indicator. And as you can see, back in the mid 1990s, about 80 countries in the world were classified as failed states. Since then, there's been a decline in trend. And nowadays, there's only about 50 or 55 countries in this category. That's the good news, or the bad news I think, is that we still have about 50 countries in the world that are failed states. And the geography of state failure in the world looks alarming, at least to me. This is the situation as of the year 2015, using once again the data from The Center for Systemic Peace. As you can see, most of the instances of state failure in the world are concentrated in a very specific part of the world, which is sub-Saharan Africa, and then it spills over into the Middle East and certain parts of south Asia. This is called The Long Arc of Geopolitical Instability in the world. It starts at relatively low levels of state failure in Latin America, and then starts to grow as you move eastwards into sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, South Asia, and then it starts to improve again if you prolong that long arc all the way to South Asia and Australia. Now, think for a second about the countries affected by state failure in the world. Which are the common characteristics of these countries? Well, one common characteristic of these countries, as we saw earlier in this class, is that it is precisely where there is or there are high degreesof state failure where we see very rapid population growth. These are countries with very young populations. Secondly, these are countries that have or are afflicted by ethnic and religious conflict. These are also countries with unstable political systems. Many of them ruled by dictators. There is rampant corruption in many of them. And lastly, I would like to bring to your attention that most of the proven reserves of oil and strategic minerals in the world happen to be located precisely in countries that are under stress because of various degrees of state failure. But, of course, this is not a coincidence. Sometimes, wealth in the form of natural resources leads to corruption, and leads to state failure.
