Description
Book SynopsisPolicymakers worry that ungoverned spaces pose dangers to security and development. Why do such spaces exist beyond the authority of the state? Earlier scholarshipwhich addressed this question with a list of domestic failuresoverlooked the crucial role that international politics play. In this shrewd book, Melissa M. Lee argues that foreign subversion undermines state authority and promotes ungoverned space. Enemy governments empower insurgents to destabilize the state and create ungoverned territory. This kind of foreign subversion is a powerful instrument of modern statecraft. But though subversion is less visible and less costly than conventional force, it has insidious effects on governance in the target state.
To demonstrate the harmful consequences of foreign subversion for state authority, Crippling Leviathan marshals a wealth of evidence and presents in-depth studies of Russia''s relations with the post-Soviet states, Malaysian subversion of the Philippines in t
Trade Review
Lee's pathbreaking book provides the best study yet of how ungoverned spaces have become important in international conflict.
* Foreign Affairs *
Melissa Lee's superb new book challenges both the conventional wisdom and the qualification to identify an overlooked way in which conflictual relations between two states since 1960 have served to weaken, rather than strengthen, one of the disputants.
* Perspective on Politics *
Lee has written nothing short of a cornerstone book for any international relations or comparative politics scholar.
* Security Studies Quarterly *
As a whole, Crippling Leviathan stands at the intersection of comparative politics and international relations and makes contributions to both fields. Lee's chief theoretical insight is that state formation and consolidation—central concepts to scholarly work in both comparative politics and international relations—is not merely a domestic, but also a transnational process. Lee's chief empirical contribution is the creative and thoughtful measures for state capacity.
* International Studies Review *
Table of ContentsIntroduction: The International Dimensions of State Weakness
1. The State of State Authority
2. The Strategy of Foreign Subversion
3. Hostile Neighbors, Weak Peripheries
4. The Roots of Subversion
5. Undermining State Authority in the Philippines
6. Undermining State Authority in Cambodia
Conclusion: The Leviathan, Crippled
