Examining the degree of state failure between contemporary Georgia and the moderate degree of state failure in present-day Serbia, this essay argues that the resource curse most significantly explains the disjunction in the capabilities of the regime and power found in these cases. Given the availability of large oil and natural gas resources, in the context of the Georgian case, the country's state has never faced pressure to engage in significant economic diversification or to build state apparatuses for collective revenue and service provision. In contrast, the Serbian case demonstrates that the separation and reconstruction of the country in the wake of the war of the early 1990s saw the country forced to build a powerful central state structure and the absence of rent-generating natural resources created a where the state was forced to build improved capabilities. Starting with an overview of the most similar systems research design used in the context of this project, the paper goes on to provide an overview of the patterns of state failure that occurred in Georgia and Serbia. Noting that the former has suffered greater deterioration in this regard, the essay argues that Georgia represents a case of a mostly failed state that is still in the midst of decline. Next, the essay goes on to provide an overview of the resource curse itself. In this regard, it is noted that this theoretical concept proposes that the presence of significant natural resources within a state's borders is highly correlated with economic stasis and low state capacity due to corruption and the accumulation of rents that arise from these characteristics. resource curse for both cases under analysis; the essay finds that... half of the paper... reduces economic development. As revenues from resource exports are siphoned off, the state never encourages a domestic entrepreneurial culture or attempts to diversify its economy in a way that accustoms it to the boom-and-bust cycle of the international economy. In broad terms, these corrupt policies therefore ultimately serve to both perpetuate economic marginalization and vulnerability across the developing world's oil and gas producing states. On this basis, Sachs & Warner (2001) propose that the resource curse is therefore highly pertinent in causing failed or failing state regime structures to the extent that the rents provided by resources do not provide incentives for any kind of state capacity building other than that which is associated with the benefit of these rents. Therefore, according to Sachs & Warner (2001), the resource curse is perpetuated