Dr. Dwight Wilson’s paper, “The Paradox of State Failure in Mexico,” received the prestigious 2014 McBrayer Award at the annual Georgia Political Science Association meeting held in Savannah, GA, this past November. The paper asks whether Mexico is a failed state. According to Dr. Wilson, “Mexico presents an apparent paradox because in many ways it looks like a stable democracy with a thriving economy, but at the same the government can’t provide basic security for its citizens as drug gangs and vigilante groups fight it out in the streets. The article argues that Mexico’s uncontrolled violence must be attributed to state failure, but proposes a reconsideration of state failure as a concept to include a limited, or segmented, form of state failure. Such a concept allows us to understand how state failure can occur, though in circumscribed functions and spaces while national state failure does not occur.”

The McBrayer Award is presented to the author of the paper presented at the annual GPSA meeting that demonstrates the most outstanding scholarship. The award includes a $500 cash prize.