This course reviews how the policy community has measured the weak state, revealing discrepancies in the quantifiable parameters, definitions, and categorizations, and analyze the efforts taken to address state weakness, particularly foreign economic and security assistance. It will review the five theoretical approaches to the weak state in the literature, which are informed by the international community's concerns with state weakness: development, intervention, post-colonialism, globalization and terrorism. The theory will be applied to specific cases of weak states in several regions (e.g., Africa, Asia, the Balkans, Latin America, the Middle East, and the Former Soviet States) and analyzes the threats they pose to international security.