World Map showing Ungoverned Spaces

When you look at a world map the major underlying assumption of it is that the states depicted are capable of exercising sovereign control over all of their territory. However, most of us know that assumption is not always true these days because all over the world there are pockets and swaths of territory where the state depicted on the map is unable to exercise the control one normally expects from a national government.

RFI: Can anyone point me to a recent world map that attempts to show the current ungoverned geographic areas all over the world? I think it would be interesting to see a world map like that.

Fund for Peace Map

You can also click on the link just below the map and it'll take you to the Foreign Policy magazine story on this. They've ranked the nations based on 12 indicators of instability.

...not an answer to the RFI, but along the topic line, is the thread discussion (with a bit of related material linked in the posts) on Ungoverned Spaces in the Global Issues and Threats forum.

This is a fairly good proxy.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/images/earth_night.jpg

Not really. Some urbanized areas are beyond state control.

Personally, I reject the notion of "ungoverned spaces." I think they are just "differently governed spaces." The phrase "ungoverned spaces" reflects our ongoing delusion that the "normal" sitatuation is for a national government to have full control over the provision of security in the territory that belongs to it.