Scholars of intervention insist that there is a framework for international peacebuilding and statebuilding interventions, at least since 1991, they call liberal internationalism – build liberal democracies and market economies. However, if one looks at actual interventions through country-based ethnographies, this lecture will argue, there is no common framework.

What do we mean when we use the term, failed states? It makes no sense theoretically and empirically, and is a political threat to countries so labeled. Yet the term is hugely popular and common place these days. Its origins tell us about the nature of transitions in the international order but very little about countries called failed states.