The failure of South Sudan seems to be a recurring phenomenon. The usual depiction of South Sudan as a permanent and ever-deepening ‘crisis’, floating from one man-made catastrophe to another. The picture of the South Sudanese masses as completely dispossessed of their agency to handle their future, rendered into the passive role of the victim while the few powerful military leaders are portrayed as soulless villains entirely driven by self- and ethnic-interest is static and unhelpful in understanding the meaning of this ‘crisis’. Without denying the overarching ‘failure’ of South Sudan, the paper will look behind the concept of ‘failed state’ by shading light on the inner logics of the state bureaucracy in contemporary South Sudan. The paper – based on a yearlong participant observation within the South Sudanese citizenship office, and subsequent anthropological research on the dynamics of the conflict and the nature of the South Sudanese state – will argue that contrary to the prevalent explanations, ‘failure’ of the state is not due to the lack of institutions or capacities. ‘Failure’ is not the result of the lack or non-existence of state institutions, organizing capacities or human talent, but is mostly due to the competing spheres within the realm of the state. In a certain sense, there is not too less but too much of the state present in South Sudan. The competing visions of the military and the civilian sides of the state, and the latter’s subordination to the former combined with the paradigm of nation-building supported by the international community resulted in the burgeoning of façade civilian institutions that are grinding between the funding opportunities and expectations of international donors and the subtle power and will of the military-complex. In this setting, South Sudanese citizens have no other choice, but to ‘play the game’ and seek every opportunity to bypass the ever-changing rules to achieve their goals.