On June 28, 2019, Prof. Tim Niblock, Member of Faculty Council at the Institute of International and Area Studies (IIAS) of Tsinghua University and Professor Emeritus of the University of Exeter, brought the 7th session of his lecture series “Area Studies: Origins, Dilemmas, Key Concepts and Future Development”, under the topic of “State Failure, Developmental Failures, and the Social/Political Effects”.

First of all, Prof Niblock first reviewed the concepts and discussions on the type of government and economic basis in the previous lecture. Then, he asked how to define the success and failure of a country, and invited the participants to give the examples of the failed countries in the past 10 years and how to judge whether the country of interest will succeed or fail in the future.

Subsequently, Prof. Niblock conducted further analysis and interpretation through these questions, comparing and explaining the concepts of strong countries, weak countries, failed countries, collapsed countries, national structure, economic policies, developmental countries, developed countries and international environment one by one.

Finally, he asked the faculty and students of IIAS to answer his questions by six areas. The event ended in warm discussion.

By Cheng Yao & Wang Tingyi