Strategic decisions to reduce the size, scope, or ambitions of organizations--including states--to enhance future prospects are among the most difficult and least understood conclusions. This volume identifies the conditions in which less really is more, analyzing the possibilities for institutional redesign--including state contraction--for responding effectively to destabilizing and often violence-laden conflicts. Among the countries discussed in detail are Turkey, Pakistan, Morocco, Congo, Jordan, Indonesia, Russia, the former Soviet Union, Iraq, and India.

• 1: Brendan O'Leary: Introduction


• 2: Brendan O'Leary: The Elements of Right-Sizing and Right-Peopling the State


• 3: Ian S. Lustick: Thresholds of Opportunity and Barriers to Change in the Right-sizing of States


• 4: Thomas M. Callaghy: From Reshaping to Resizing a Failing State? The Case of the Congo/Zaire


• 5: Gurharpal Singh: Resizing and Reshaping the State: India from Partition to the Present


• 6: Vali Nasr: The Negotiable State: Borders and Power-Struggles in Pakistan


• 7: Alexander J. Motyl: Reifying Boundaries, Fetishising the Nation: Soviet Legacies and Elite legitimacy in Post-Soviet States


• 8: Umit Cizre: Turkey's Kurdish Problem: Borders, Identity and Hegemony


• 9: Denise Natali: Manufacturing Identity and Managing Kurds in Iraq


• 10: Stephen Zunes: Indigestible Lands? Comparing the Fates of Western Sahara and East Timor


• 11: Marc Lynch: Right-Sizing Over the Jordan: The Politics of Down-Sizing Borders


• 12: Oren Yiftachel: 'Right-Sizing' or 'Right-Shaping'? Politics, Ethnicity and Territory in Plural Societies


• 13: Ian S. Lustick: Conclusion: Right-Sizing and the Alignment of States and Collective Identities