Paul Collier's new rules for rebuilding a broken nation

John Chamberlain (1927 2011), a Chicago artist known for his sculptures of welded pieces of wrecked automobiles.

Some ship wrecked Phoenician captains tried to blame the Ionians for cowardice before the end of the battle.

This cluster of record breaking events could be merely an astonishing streak of bad luck.

All they will leave behind for their people is another wasted chance, with shattered hopes and unpaid bills.

I remember the face, I remember the act, I remember the day, the pain, the drug in my drink, the torn clothes, the stolen money, the crashed car.

The United States, in an act of generosity and vision, provided the shattered European countries with economic help and a security guarantee.

In rebuilding the shattered post Thatcherite economy, we should be careful not to revive the failed policies of the past.

The introduction of Broken Windows Theory in the 1980s generated a dramatic transformation in the concepts used in forming policies in order to circumvent the previous issue of unconstitutionality.

However, environments filled with disorder, such as broken windows or graffiti, indicate an inability for the neighborhood to supervise itself, therefore leading to an increase in criminal activity.

As Harvard Business School professor Josh Lerner explains in his book Boulevard of Broken Dreams, US Department of Defense contracts played a crucial role in accelerating the early growth of Silicon Valley.

In communities afflicted by poverty and or devastated by HIV, girls are the first to be taken out of school in order to generate income or help take care of the sick.

The documentary s footage of shot out computer screens and piles of smashed printers and cameras under graffiti reading Palestine Never makes one despair.

As long as central government takes responsibility for maintaining a high and stable level of employment, Keynes thought, most of the rest of economic life can be left free of official interference. Building a proper division of responsibility between state and market from this insight is today s main task.

The civility laws, originating in the late 1980s and early 1990s, provide an example of the usage of this latter aspect of the Broken Windows Theory as legitimization for discriminating against individuals considered disorderly in order to increase the sense of security in urban spaces.

Do international tribunals of the sort Milosevic faced before his death promote or postpone serious self reflection and reconciliation in damaged societies? Do they strengthen or undermine the political stability needed to rebuild wrecked communities and shattered economies?

The brutal repression of Chechnya, violent Islamic extremism, an American cult of violence, immigrants dashed dreams, and plenty of other factors still to be uncovered create a complex pattern of risk that is difficult to unravel and even harder to minimize.

But that is extremely unlikely. This is far more likely to be the result of a warming climate a consequence of this decade being, worldwide, the hottest for a thousand years.