A failed state is a state that has lost its ability to fulfill fundamental security and development functions, lacking effective control over its territory and borders. Common characteristics of a failed state include a government incapable of tax collection, law enforcement, security assurance, territorial control, political or civil office staffing, and infrastructure maintenance. When this happens, widespread corruption and criminality, the intervention of state and non-state actors, the appearance of refugees and the involuntary movement of populations, sharp economic decline, and military intervention from both within and outside the state are much more likely to occur.
AMISOM soldier secures Awdinle village, Somalia, after liberating it from Al-Shabaab in 2013. The Fragile States Index has repeatedly ranked Somalia at the top spot, attributing it to "widespread lawlessness, ineffective government, terrorism, insurgency, crime, abysmal development, and piracy."
A state is a political entity that regulates society and the population within a territory. Government is considered to form the fundamental apparatus of contemporary states.
Painting of Roman Senators encircling Julius Caesar
The frontispiece of Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan