I used another concept.. imagine people as slaves and state agents (mostly politicians) as slave-owners. Does poor slaves implies slave-owners' failure? Nope.

I used another concept.. imagine people as slaves and state agents (mostly politicians) as slave-owners. Does poor slaves implies slave-owners' failure? Nope. And this is reality in Brazil. Politicians are wealthy, they are paid well, they create monopolies for corporations (and get benefits from it whereas consumers pay the cost) and they may even be corrupt. Some may get caught, sure, but are replaced by others. But nonetheless, the slaves keep hoping for the "right slave owner". Thus politicians, politics and the state are extremely successful. In this perspective, a failing state would be one whose politicians are getting less wealthy, lose intervention power and so on. Strong individuals, weak politics is a failed state. But in this situation people are wealthy (contrary to the concept shown on wikipedia). Another (somehow related) type of failed state are those whose population emigrates massively, therefore slave-owners have less slaves. Or when a secession occurs, where power get less centralized.