In explaining the nature of national boundaries in Africa, Herbts uses the term Buffer Mechanismto highlight how conflictive colonial and postcolonial conditions and practices have defined the trajectory of African states. Buffer Mechanisms are those tactics fashioned by colonizers and African rulers with the intention of extending power over territory and population. The fundamental assumption of the current of nation-state system stresses that states are only viable if they are able to control their territory defined by their borders. As a consequence of misinterpretation and misunderstanding of African realities, these mechanisms have failed. The African state-building experience shows that pre-colonial, post-colonial, or post-independence African states have been able to extend authority due to this poor implementation. Thus, Herbts proposes that the inconsistence of such mechanisms adopted from the European template and suggested by the international system have led African statehood to failure.

Boundarieshave been a powerful buffer mechanism of state consolidation in Africa. Herbts considers three salient buffer mechanisms in the fundamental understanding in the state-building process in African states: borders, currency exchange, and citizenship rules. These boundaries intended to enhance the capabilities of the center, core cities, over the whole territory. However, in comparing Africa and Europe state building process, Herbts concludes that these boundaries have been inefficient features leading to the lack of robust institutions and consequently to the failure of African states. During and post colonization, the international state system endorsed such mechanism taken from the European experience, thus Herbst affirms that this misconception in implementing procedures was erroneous because state consolidation in Europe was shaped by war, dense population, and the competition of territory, conditions absent in the African experience.

.Hinterland and Core Areas,these terms are really important to understand the differences of power broadcasting and the state building process in Europe and Africa.. Herbts theorizes that states in Africa failed in extending power because of the geographical difficulties. Vast territories in Africa are intrinsically correlated with the incapability to extend authority. This condition is not only visible in Africa current politics but also was the common denominator in pre-colonial and colonial periods. Therefore, Herbts’s central argument concludes that because Europe experienced different socio-political and geographical challenges, European states developed in a particular way that it would be absurd to apply the same strategies, structures, institutions, measures and understandings in the process of state consolidation in Africa or even in another part of the world. Accordingly, the dynamics between core cities and hinterland determined the European state building process differently than in Africa. In Africa, the vas territory and disconnection between core governments and population within the hinterland traced the struggles in colonial and postcolonial Africa. In addition, this condition made buffer mechanism inefficient