Westerners have a fetish for nation-states and assume any government is better than none, but when the feasibility set does not contain liberal democracy, propping up weak or failed governments yields very bad outcomes; there is a good argument for allowing weak and failed states to fully collapse, because such governments are a pure cost on citizens benefiting only cronies, and a state weakening or collapsing signals it is not providing goods people want.
normativepending
Speaker
Christopher CoyneEvidence Quote
“what we're doing is empowering the worst governments in the world ... when a state's weak failed or it's collapsing that's a good sign of something ... it's not providing goods and services that people want”
Created: 6/15/2026, 9:29:02 AM
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