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Concepts and Dilemmas of State Building in Fragile Situations FROM FRAGILITY TO RESILIENCE OECD/DAC DISCUSSION PAPER Concepts and Dilemmas of State Building in Fragile Situations FROM FRAGILITY TO RESILIENCE ORGANISATION FOR ECONOMIC CO-OPERATION AND DEVELOPMENT ORGANISATION FOR ECONOMIC CO-OPERATION AND DEVELOPMENT The OECD is a unique forum where the governments of 30 democracies work together to address the economic, social and environmental challenges of globalisation.The OECD is also at the forefront of efforts to understand and to help governments respond to new developments and concerns, such as corporate governance, the information economy and the challenges of an ageing population. The Organisation provides a setting where governments can compare policy experiences, seek answers to common problems, identify good practice and work to co-ordinate domestic and international policies. The OECD member countries are: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Korea, Luxembourg, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, the Slovak Republic, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, the United Kingdom and the United States. The Commission of the European Communities takes part in the work of the OECD. OECD Publishing disseminates widely the results of the Organisation's statistics gathering and research on economic, social and environmental issues, as well as the conventions, guidelines and standards agreed by its members. Off-print of the Journal on Development 2008, Volume 9, No. 3 Also available in French FOREWORD Foreword Today it is widely accepted that development, peace and stability require effective and legitimate states able to fulfil key international responsibilities and to provide core public goods and services, including security. The OECD DAC Principles for Good International Engagement in Fragile States and Situations (April 2007) see state building as the central objective for international partnerships in situations of fragility.The long- term vision is “to help national reformers to build effective, legitimate, and resilient state institutions, capable of engaging productively with their people to promote sustained development”. While support to state building is thus increasingly seen as a means to assist in responding to and preventing fragility and conflict, it is a relatively recent and as yet loosely defined concept in the context of development assistance. This report, commissioned by the DAC Fragile States Group, aims to address this conceptual shortcoming and bring greater clarity to the policy discussion on fragility, resilience and state building. The report proposes that state building needs to be seen in the broader context of state-formation processes and state-society relations. It sees state building as a primarily endogenous development founded on a political process of negotiation and contestation between the state and societal groups. The idea of state-society bargaining as the basis for building more effective, legitimate and resilient states provides a particularly useful lens for thinking about situations of fragility, but also about governance and development more generally. It helps to shift thinking from a focus on transferring institutional models, towards a focus on the local political processes which create public institutions and generate their legitimacy in the eyes of a state’s population. This report follows upon earlier work commissioned by the Fragile States Group to further reflections within the international community on Whole of Government Approaches to Fragile States and Service Delivery in Fragile Situations: Key Concepts, Findings and Lessons. I am confident that this report will help to promote greater consensus and clarity within and outside the DAC on what state building means in a situation of fragility. Such consensus is essential if international actors are to play a constructive role in this critically important but complex, highly political and nationally driven process. Richard Carey Director Development Co-operation Directorate CONCEPTS AND DILEMMAS OF STATE BUILDING IN FRAGILE SITUATIONS – © OECD 2008 3 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Acknowledgements This publication is the result of an independent study commissioned by the DAC Fragile States Group (FSG) and prepared by the Center on International Cooperation at New York University and the International Peace Academy. It was led by Bruce Jones and Rahul Chandran with Elizabeth Cousens, Jenna Slotin and Jake Sherman. Support was provided by Louise Andersen, Kaysie Brown, Andrew Hart, Amy Scott, Grace Gabala, Gigja Sorensen and Katherine Toth. Particular thanks are due to Judith Karl, Alain Whaites (Co-chairs of the FSG State Building Task Team) and Stephan Massing (OECD DAC Secretariat) who managed and provided guidance and inputs throughout the entire process, as well as members of the State Building Task Team, including Sarah Boxall, Katharina Buse, Homa-Zahra Fotouhi, Catherine-Isabel Froehling, Yukimasa Fukuda, Harry Greenwell, Keiichi Hashimoto, Michael Koros, Masaki Kudo, Christian Lotz, Eli Moen, Susan Moore, David Morgan, Alfonso Pascual Perez, Eugenia Piza Lopez, Anne Friederike Roeder, Dorothée Starck, James Wahome and Tjip Walker. The publication was prepared by a team of OECD staff that included Stephan Massing, Alexandra Jonas and Ben Dickinson; Carola Miras provided invaluable editorial assistance and Stephanie Coic contributed to the graphic design. In order to achieve its aims the OECD has set up a number of specialised committees. One of these is the Development Assistance Committee, whose members have agreed to secure an expansion of aggregate volume of resources made available to developing countries and to improve their effectiveness. To this end, members periodically review together both the amount and the nature of their contributions to aid programmes, bilateral and multilateral, and consult each other on all other relevant aspects of their development assistance policies. The members of the Development Assistance Committee are Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, the United States and the Commission of the European Communities. 4 CONCEPTS AND DILEMMAS OF STATE BUILDING IN FRAGILE SITUATIONS – © OECD 2008 TABLE OF CONTENTS Table of Contents Foreword............................................................................................................................................................3 Acknowledgements .........................................................................................................................................4 Executive summary .........................................................................................................................................7 Core considerations.......................................................................................................................................7 Implications for policy and programming .................................................................................................8 Implications for bilateral and multilateral organisation and financing................................................9 Conclusion......................................................................................................................................................9 I. Rationale, background and key concepts ................................................................................................11 International engagement in fragile states .............................................................................................12 Key terms and concepts .............................................................................................................................12 II. The state, stability and fragility...............................................................................................................15 Defining fragility..........................................................................................................................................17 Causal factors in state fragility or resilience ..........................................................................................17 A dynamic concept of fragility...................................................................................................................18 Pathways to stability and resilience .........................................................................................................20 III. Implications for response: Policy ...........................................................................................................23 The need for political analysis: Assessing the state of the state..........................................................23 Priorities, trade-offs and sequencing........................................................................................................23 Influencing legitimacy ................................................................................................................................24 Response to different facets of fragility ..................................................................................................26 IV. Implications for response: Programming..............................................................................................33