Abstract

Whenever the third wave of democratization seems to be in the course of exhaustion, at the international level, it seems to be still evident the presence of political instability linked to the state fragility. Which variable may affect the process of democracy-building? In this article, the Authors intend to explore one of the main assumptions in the field of political science: a stateness problems (i.e. nationalist conflicts, lack of legitimacy of state borders) can affect the result of the democratization process. Considering that, the main objectives of this article are: to define state-fragility, to operazionalize this concept, to find variables that measure the stateness, to find how the stateness affects the democratization process during the third wave. In order to do that, the Authors have considered the main research institutes that measure the state fragility; they have chosen the one more reliable for the research and than compared these results with those related to the development of the democratization process. The research will put into evidence that the incomplete perform of the process of state-building affect particularly the African continent.