This paper addresses one of the empirical claims of the 'resource curse' argument, namely that oil abundance raises the probability of political violence.

This article provides a critical review of recent literature that has attempted to define what a 'failed state' is and explains why such states emerge. It is argued that aggregate indices of 'failure' are misleading due to the wide variations of capacity across state functions within a polity. The focus on ranking states also distracts attention away from analyses concerning the dynamics of state capacity. Moreover, many of the definitions either compare reality to a Weberian ideal, or assume that violence is 'development in reverse', both of which are ahistorical and unhelpful as a guide to policy. The second part of the article assesses the contributions of functionalist, 'new war' and neo-Tillean approaches to explain state failure. The article finds that while these theories take concrete historical situations seriously, they have important theoretical and empirical shortcomings. Finally, the conclusion outlines an agenda for further research.Cet article offre un examen critique de la litte´rature re´cente cherchant a`de´finir ce qu'est un É tat de´faillant, ainsi que les raisons donnant lieu a`leur e´mergence. Il conside`re que les indicateurs agre´ge´s permettant d'e´tablir qu'un É tat est de´faillant sont tous trompeurs en raison de la grande variation qui peut exister au sein d'un meˆme É tat quant a`sa capacite´a`assurer ses diffe´rentes fonctions. Il est souligne´que les classements de´tournent l'attention des analyses portant sur la dynamique variable de la capacite´des É tats. Plusieurs approchent comparent, de plus, la re´alite´avec un ide´al weberien, ou bien supposent que la violence est une forme de de´veloppement ) a`l'envers *, ce qui constitue une pre´supposition anhistorique et inutile du point de vue de l'aide a`la de´cision. La deuxie`me partie de l'article se penche en particulier sur les contributions fonctionnalistes, du paradigme des ) nouvelles guerres *, ainsi que des approches base´es sur les the´ories de Charles Tilly. Bien que prenant en compte les re´alite´s historiques, ces diffe´rentes approches ont toutes des points faibles, tant the´oriques qu'empiriques, et la conclusion de l'article se base sur ces derniers afin d'e´laborer un agenda de recherche futur a`propos des É tats de´faillants.

This article provides a critical survey of the resource curse-the idea that mineral and fuel abundance generates negative developmental outcomes in less developed countries. In particular, it examines the idea that mineral and fuel abundance generates growth-restricting forms of state intervention, extraordinarily large degrees of rent seeking, and corruption, which are generally argued to be negative in terms of the developmental outcomes they generate. The analysis surveys the Dutch disease, rentier state, and rent-seeking versions of the resource curse and finds they have significant shortcomings in terms of theory and evidence. It also identifies some decisive factors that help determine the blessing threshold-below which the risk of a resource curse may be very high-in mineral and fuel abundant developing countries.