5.
ZIMBABWE
FSI
score: 106.3 
After more than three decades of strongman Robert Mugabe's misrule -- punctuated by massacres, assassinations, and government-led campaigns against white farmers -- Zimbabwe is in shambles. The country's economy has deteriorated for much of the past decade, and in 2008 hyperinflation peaked at an annual rate that one economist calculated as the second highest in world history. Since then, the economy has begun to expand again, growing by an estimated 6 percent in 2011, but Zimbabwe remains politically fragile: Mugabe's power-sharing arrangement with opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai remains more theory than reality. The country's future, and how much worse it will sink on this list, depends largely on who will rule when the 88-year-old Mugabe dies.
Here, a poster of Mugabe hangs torn on a street-side wall in Bulawayo.
John Moore/Getty Images
