Côte d’ Ivoire, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mozambique, Republic of Congo, Somalia, Sudan, and Uganda. Extraction paves the way for conflict, not unlike the conflict that the highly extractive institutions of the Maya citystates generated almost a thousand years ago. Conflict precipitates state failure. So another reason why nations fail today is that their states fail. This, in turn, is a consequence of decades of rule under extractive economic and political institutions.
WHO IS THE STATE?
The cases of Zimbabwe, Somalia, and Sierra Leone, even if typical of poor countries in Africa, and perhaps even some in Asia, seem rather extreme. Surely Latin American countries do not have failed states? Surely their presidents are not brazen enough to win the lottery?
In Colombia, the Andean Mountains gradually merge to the north with a large coastal plain that borders the Caribbean Ocean. Colombians call this the tierra caliente, the“ hot country,” as distinct from the Andean world of the tierra fria, the“ cold country.” For the last fifty years, Colombia has been regarded by most political scientists and governments as a democracy. The United States feels happy to negotiate a potential free trade agreement with the country and pours all kinds of aid into it, particularly military aid. After a short-lived military government, which ended in 1958, elections have been regularly held, even though until 1974 a pact rotated political power and the presidency between the two traditional political parties, the Conservatives and the Liberals. Still, this pact, the National Front, was itself ratified by the Colombian people via a plebiscite, and this all seems democratic enough.
Yet while Colombia has a long history of democratic elections, it does not have inclusive institutions. Instead, its history has been marred by violations of civil liberties, extrajudicial executions, violence against civilians, and civil war. Not the sort of outcomes we expect from a democracy. The civil war in Colombia is different from that in Sierra Leone, where the state and society collapsed and chaos reigned. But it is a civil war nonetheless and one that has