The State Failure project has analyzed the propensity for different types of state failures within countries, including those associated with revolution, ethnic conflict, genocide-politicide, and abrupt regime change (using categories and data pioneered by Ted Robert Gurr. Upon the advice of Gurr, IFs groups the first three as internal war and the last as political instability.

IFs uses the same primary variables (infant mortality, democracy, and trade openness) as the State Failure project to drive forecasts of the probability of individual events of state failure, of ongoing episodes of it, and of the magnitude of episodes. In addition, it allows the use in the formulation of GDP per capita and years of education. Many other linkages have been and can be explored, including cultural regions.