Unhappy in Their Own Way: A Country-Based Framework for Addressing State FragilitySeth Kaplan1

In recent years, the international community has made immense progress understanding the unique challenges fragile states face and strategizing how they might be overcome. But much more needs to be done.

Fragile states have long bedeviled the international community and the threat they pose has only grown. As fragile states lag behind in development and the establishment of security,2 the world’s most severe poverty and conflict have become concentrated within their borders.3 These borders have hardly constituted buffers, however, as these conflicts threaten the more stable members of the international community in an increasingly direct way. Syria has become a hotbed for extremists. Boko Haram threatens Nigeria’s fortunes—and those of its neighbors. Instability in Libya has spilled over into Mali and the rest of the Sahel. The global pursuit of prosperity and security increasingly depends on improving governance in the fragile world, the theater in which the foreign policies of Western countries will increasingly be judged.

Past efforts have yielded meager returns. Despite tremendous investment, international engagement in places such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo have failed to alter the vicious cycle of violent conflict, exclusion, and poverty that has long afflicted these countries. These failures are not merely inevitable products of attempts to tackle intractable problems. Rather, these failures stem in part from an inability to understand the idiosyncratic nature of fragile states and to devise solutions tailored to it. The fragile state has been a blurry concept and that blurriness has made targeted policy difficult.

The New Deal for Engagement in Fragile States, an agreement forged between a set of fragile states and their international partners in 2011, is a major step forward. Designed to

1 The author thanks Robert Bentley, Ivan Briscoe, Elise Ford, Nate Grubman, Anette Hoffmann, Marjolein Jongman, Bob Lamb, Christian Lotz, Michael Lund, Alexandre Marc, Kevin Melton, Nadia Piffaretti, Steven Schoofs, Brenda Seaver, Lauren Van Metre, and Erwin van Veen for their comments on this essay.2 While most of the developing world has made great strides over the past two decades, fragile states have not. Of the world’s 37 ongoing armed conflicts in 2011, over 20 were in fragile states, with Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen having the most civilian casualties. These countries have for the most part “lost economic ground over the past 10 years compared to other developing countries,” and lag behind in education and other human development indicators. Emmanuel Letouzé and Juana de Catheu, “Fragile States 2013: Resource flows and trends in a shifting world,” Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, 2012, 30-32, http://www.oecd.org/dac/incaf/FragileStates2013.pdf . According to the 2011 World Development Report, “the development deficit is concentrated in fragile and conflict-affected and recovering states, which account for 77% of school-age children not enrolled in primary school, 61% of poverty, and 70% of infant mortality.” World Bank, World Development Report 2011: Conflict, Security, and Development (Washington: World Bank, 2011), 63.3 By 2018, the proportion of the world’s poor living in fragile states is expected to reach as many as one half. By 2030, it is expected to reach as many as two-thirds. Laurence Chandy, Natasha Ledlie, and Veronika Penciakova, “The Final Countdown: Prospects forEnding Extreme Poverty by 2030 (Interactive),” Brookings Institution, April 24, 2013.

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improve how both governments and aid agencies approach the problems these countries face, as well as improve the cooperation among them, the New Deal focuses efforts on four fronts: creating regular assessments of state fragility, establishing a common plan across government and donors to reduce fragility, strengthening domestic capacity to govern, and concentrating resources on a set of five goals, which it refers to as the Peacebuilding and Statebuilding Goals (or PSGs).4 Compared to previous efforts, it thus prioritizes issues that are much more likely to reduce fragility. In theory, the assessment process should yield a better understanding of what ails each country. The PSGs ought to vault inclusive politics, security, and justice—all major sources of fragility—to their rightful place atop the reform agenda for states and international organizations alike.

However, there are clear limits to the New Deal and the efforts behind it. The PSGs are rather broad. They do not focus on causes, just results; ignore many important drivers of fragility; and provide a very limited roadmap. There is no attempt to identify and build upon countries’ strengths. There is no consideration of how to move forward if governments are uncommitted or vaguely committed to the initiative. Fragile state governments are supposed to undertake the fragility assessments that are meant to guide policymaking, but political and capacity constraints will naturally impede these in most places.

The international community clearly requires a more comprehensive framework that builds upon the New Deal for understanding and addressing state fragility. The best approach would be rooted in the societal and institutional dynamics that cause fragility in these countries. These fundamental dynamics frame how more formal institutions and processes work, determining the quality of government, the inclusiveness of the economic and political systems, and the strength of the centripetal or centrifugal forces acting on society. In short, fragility is a function of two variables: social cohesion and institutionalization.5 Together, these determine the capacity of a population to cooperate and to direct this cooperation toward national-level challenges.

Bolstering fragile states, then, depends not on formal institutional reform or on targeting fragility’s visible symptoms, such as corruption, conflict, or inequity. Focusing instead on the underlying causes of fragility provides both a clearer understanding of the problems that bedevil these countries and a smarter toolbox for strengthening them. More precise diagnosis yields more targeted and effective remedies.

In this article, I offer a new Country Fragility Assessment Framework (hereafter referred to as the CFAF or Framework) to help guide diagnosis, as well as a set of policy recommendations that aim to directly address the sources of state fragility in its various shades. Departing from the traditional focus on formal processes and institutions, I arrive at a very different mix of policy recommendations from those usually offered.

Misdiagnosing Fragility

4 For more information, see http://www.g7plus.org/new-deal-document/ and http://www.newdeal4peace.org/peacebuilding-and-statebuilding-goals/.5 For a fuller examination of how to identify fragile states, see Seth Kaplan, “Identifying Truly Fragile States,” The Washington Quarterly, 37 (Spring 2014).

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Past attempts to improve stability and governance in fragile states have failed because they have been based on a misdiagnosis of what causes these countries’ problems. Fragility is believed to be the result of a weak state and state-society relationship. Governments are thought to lack legitimacy because of how they are chosen. They are thought to be unable to provide quality public goods because of a lack of either capacity or will. Bolstering fragile states is then thought to depend on holding regular elections and increasing the ability of government to execute core functions, such as education, healthcare, and security provision.6

For instance, a 2012 OECD report on fragile states defined these places as unable to “develop mutually constructive relations with society” and often having a “weak capacity to carry out basic governance functions.”7 It proceeded to highlight the importance of the state-society relationship fifteen times and the social contract thirteen, yet never touched upon the societal dynamics that determine these relationships.8 Efforts to assess and counteract fragility have repeatedly failed because they concentrate far too much on the formal institutions of the state, ignoring the broader informal societal factors that influence these and matter most (institutions are important, but not the way donors conceive them).

Although many international actors have recognized that fragile states have unique problems and therefore require specialized responses,9 there have not been substantial advances in determining what such specialized responses would entail. In some policy circles, there has been more emphasis on civil society, social capital, and the need for institutions to mediate between groups, but such ideas still operate at the margin of thinking on policy and have had little impact on programming.10

The default approach to fragility rests on a foundation of confusion regarding what constitutes a fragile state. The widely cited lists of fragile states11 embody the ambiguity surrounding the concept. These lists comprise measures that have no causal relationship with fragility (such as population growth and income levels); are products, rather than causes, of fragility (such as violence and corruption levels); or are based on Western political norms (such as regime type).

Assessments of state fragility then suffer from two main shortcomings: First, they focus much more on symptoms than on causes, partly because of the hunger in academia and

6 Alexandre Marc et al, Societal Dynamics and Fragility: Engaging Societies in Responding to Fragile Situations (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2013), 1–2, 12.7 Letouzé and de Catheu, “Fragile States 2013,”11.8 Letouzé and de Catheu, “Fragile States 2013.”9 See, for example, “Principles for Good International Engagement in Fragile States and Situations,” Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, April 2007, http://www.oecd.org/development/incaf/38368714.pdf. 10 For an example of new thinking, see World Bank, World Development Report 2011; and Marc et al, Societal Dynamics and Fragility; Britain’s Department for International Development (DFID), for example, takes a more holistic approach than many other aid organizations, yet still ends up focusing on “core state functions” including “citizen security, justice and financial and economic management,” and “strong state-society relations.” See DFID, “Building Peaceful States and Societies: A DFID Practice Paper,” 2010, 6–7 11 See, for example, those formulated by the Fund for Peace and Foreign Policy (which together publish the Fragile States Index), the Political Instability Task Force (originally the State Failure Task Force), the Brookings Institution, the World Bank, the OECD, or the Institute for Economics and Peace.

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the policy world for easily observable and broadly comparable quantitative data for use in large-scale comparisons. These studies are helpful in making broad generalizations; they are less useful for assessing (and bolstering) individual countries.

Second, the concept of fragility is often based on a number of political and moral suppositions that underlie the common Western conception of how states should work—and thus how they ought to be improved. Discussion inevitably focuses on the importance of the social contract, democracy, and human rights (and on how to reduce those security threats that affect donors). Normatively, these are important principles, but there is little evidence that existing ways of promoting such ideas can yield solutions to the fundamental challenges to fragile states. A state needs a certain minimum level of cohesion and institutionalization before it can effectively implement a democratic social contract.12

This conceptual blurriness is more than a theoretical failure. It has had serious consequences. Beclouded by the common understanding of statebuilding, international efforts to bolster the state in places such as Somalia and Afghanistan have fallen miserably short of expectations. In Somalia, for instance, the international community has tried no fewer than fifteen times since 1991 to rebuild the Somali state in a top-down fashion—and fifteen times it has failed. Isolated from the political realities within the country, aid agencies, embassies, and multilateral organizations have repeatedly misread the country’s political dynamics and forced upon it what Somalia expert Ken Menkhaus has called “unimaginative, non-strategic, template-driven policy responses with little relevance to the Somali context and little input from Somali voices.”13

In Afghanistan, the construction of an overly centralized state and powerful presidency may have facilitated easier interaction with foreign states and other organizations, but more importantly it has ensured that government is too distant and corrupt to serve the needs of most of the population and that elections make the country’s ethnic fault lines quake. The 2014 election nearly degenerated into open conflict because the stakes for winning the top office are so high that neither party wanted to concede defeat. Corruption so marred the process that it became impossible to know who actually won.14

Frustrations over international strategies led to the formation of the g7+, a group of fragile states formed in 2010 to share experiences and engage with donors.15 The group, which has expanded to include 20 countries, seeks to broaden the agenda pursued by the international community in order to better address what it sees as the root causes of fragility.16 The g7+ emphasizes the need to enhance political dialogue within countries and to prioritize the five PSGs in policymaking. These stress the need for inclusive

12 Samuel P. Huntington argued as much almost half a century ago. See Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1968). Intellectual blinders are further solidified by the needs of donors and international organizations to find strong leaders, centralized governments, and formalized processes and institutions with which to work. Their own financial instruments, accountability mechanisms, and human-resource policies limit their ability to do otherwise. This strongly biases action in particular directions whether local situations call for it or not.13 Ken Menkhaus, Somalia: A Country in Peril, a Policy Nightmare, Enough Strategy Paper (Washington DC: Enough Project, 2008), 9.14 Fraud characterized an estimated quarter of the votes cast. See Carlotta Gall, “Afghan Election, Signs of Systemic Fraud Cast Doubt on Many Votes,” New York Times, August 23, 2014.15 See http://www.g7plus.org/.

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political settlements, better security, wider sense of justice, and stronger economic foundations—principles that inform my concept of state fragility. It is still too early to judge the impact of the g7+, but it is clear that the priorities of leaders of the fragile world diverge from those that have traditionally moved the donor community.

The Underlying—and Oft-ignored—Society

Structurally fragile states are not like other states. With weak institutions and unbridgeable social divisions, they function according to a different set of sociopolitical dynamics than do robust states. As such, they face uniquely formidable obstacles to stability, development, and democracy; they are trapped in a vicious cycle whereby instability and underdevelopment feed on each other. Social divisions hamper efforts at improving governance and fostering economic opportunity, which in turn creates discontent and a zero-sum competition for power and resources.

The way individuals, groups, and institutions interact and relate to one another determines whether a country is structurally fragile or not. Although the state is a key actor, its function is largely a product of how groups in society relate to one another—and to it. State capacity matters, but the functioning of the state is strongly influenced by the dynamics of the society in which it is embedded.

Social cohesion—defined as the quality of relationships between groups—determines levels of trust and collaboration and how institutions interact with one another. The more cohesive the society, the greater the likelihood that different groups and institutions will work together and manage conflict constructively. Even if consensus is ever illusive, the great majority understands the importance of working together according to a commonly accepted set of rules and values.

Social cohesion is especially important in less developed countries because formal institutions are weak and often susceptible to manipulation, corruption, and bias. Unlike their more institutionalized brethren in the developed world, these states feature formal institutions incapable of neutral mediation and enforcement of rules and unable to deliver truly public goods. As a result, elites and officials have much undue discretion to bend the rules and appropriate the resources of the state.

When formal institutions are weak, social cohesion can substitute to a certain extent to encourage leaders to resolve problems with amicability and a public spirit, as has happened at crucial points in the histories of places such as Somaliland, Chile, and Tunisia. Moreover, without social cohesion, it is very hard to improve formal institutions—the approach typically advocated by donors—because elites and officials have strong incentives to undermine reform, which may threaten their interests.

On the other hand, if a state is strongly institutionalized, these social fractures matter much less because government will be much more likely to act according to a principle of neutrality, and thus be a much better and fairer manager of conflict and distributor of resources. As William Easterly explains, “good institutions are most necessary and

16 Jacob Hughes, Ted Hooley, Siafa Hage and George Ingram, “Implementing the New Deal for Fragile States,” Brookings Institution, July 2014, 1, http://www.brookings.edu/research/papers/2014/07/implementing-new-deal-fragile-states.

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beneficial where there are ethnolinguistic divisions. Formal institutions substitute for the ‘social glue’ that is in shorter supply when there are ethnolinguistic divisions.”17

Institutionalization of the state is not synonymous with strong security forces; a country can have powerful security forces that only serve the interests of a particular clan, ethnic group, or ruling clique. Rather it is about the ability of political parties, large government ministries, NGOs, and companies to effectively coordinate large numbers of people and departments, manage interactions with many other entities, and perform across many locations and over long periods of time. It is about “the extent to which the political organizations and procedures encompass activity in the society” and are able by their “adaptability, complexity, autonomy, and coherence” to respond to the ever-growing needs of rapidly evolving societies.18

Seen this way, fragility can be understood as existing along two dimensions (see Table 1), with low institutionalization and low social cohesion at one corner (occupied by countries such as Somalia, the Central African Republic, and South Sudan), and cohesive, highly institutionalized nation states occupying the opposite one.19 Systems marked by low political fragmentation and high institutionalization (category I), as in the case of almost all developed countries and developing countries such as Turkey, China, and Chile, are genuinely robust. Only this group is capable of fully tackling the challenges of development. Political systems with low fragmentation and institutionalization (category II) are relatively stable but sluggish. These have potentially bright futures if they can foster good investment climates and improve state capabilities. Conventional development assistance has historically done well when focused on either of these two categories. States with high identity fragmentation and low institutionalization but high government coercion capabilities (category III), such as the Soviet Union or Uzbekistan, are inherently weak and potentially unstable. States that combine low institutionalization (especially in the security realm) with highly fragmented political cultures (category IV) are fundamentally weak and unstable. Fragile states are concentrated in categories III and IV.20

Table 1. Four Types of Political Orders (with Examples)21

Low Political-Identity Fragmentation

High Political-Identity Fragmentation

17 William Easterly, Jozef Ritzan, and Michael Woolcock, Social Cohesion, Institutions, and Growth, Working Paper No. 94 (Washington, DC: Center for Global Development, August 2006), 14.18 Samuel P. Huntington, “Political Development and Political Decay,” World Politics 17 no. 3 (April 1965): 393–94.19 There is some similarly between this analysis and the limited access orders used in Douglass North, John Wallis, Steven Webb, and Barry Weingast, eds., In the Shadow of Violence: Politics, Economics, and the Problems of Development (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012).20 For more information on this categorization, see Kaplan, “Identifying Truly Fragile States.”21 Ibid., 55.

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High Institutionalization (or at least high coercive

capacity)

I: Dynamic

BotswanaTurkeyChileChina

III: Fragile but Controlled

Syria (before 2011)Soviet Union

Iraq (before 2003)Saudi ArabiaUzbekistan

Low Institutionalization

II: Stable but Sluggish

SenegalArmeniaTanzania

Bangladesh

IV: Fragile and Unstable

NigeriaDRC

SomaliaLibya (after 2011)Syria (after 2011)

Different combinations of fragility exist all along the continua, with even the most robust of countries having some degree of it. Progress need not be linear,22 but it is always difficult. Wherever they are on the spectrum—and no matter how successful they are—states need to consistently reinforce their cohesion and institutions or risk seeing their fragility increase. Of course, as fragility is more a societal phenomenon than a state one, it can be concentrated in some pockets or regions of a country much more than in others (e.g., outlying areas), and encompass parts or all of more than one country at times.

States towards the fragile corner are trapped in a vicious cycle fueled by societal fragmentation and weak institutions that feed on one another and make escape difficult. The combination of rigid social divisions and weak state institutions in Lebanon, Libya, and Yemen, for instance, means that institutions become stages for the sometimes-violent competition over power. In African countries such as Nigeria and Kenya, the state has islands of effectiveness, but constrained by networks of patronage and corruption, these islands are isolated. In such countries, the state lacks the autonomy and capacity to manage conflict and drive development forward constructively. Instead, it is beholden to competitive power dynamics within society.

These underlying dynamics affect how economies, politics, security apparatuses, administrative organs, and legal systems perform. The more cohesive the country, the more likely these will work as advertised, inclusively and without bias. Institutions may still be less than perfect at times (especially if we define “perfection” as what exists in Western countries), but they will be much more constructive catalysts for cooperation, the resolution of disputes, security-sector reform, industrialization (crucial to inclusive growth), and democratization. In fragile states, in contrast, institutions will be susceptible to capture or corruption. It is virtually impossible to construct sturdy formal institutions in a place like Afghanistan or Somalia without addressing the social cleavages that threaten to rip them apart.

22 Marc et al, Societal Dynamics and Fragility, 2

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A New Framework

In recent years, analysts have developed sophisticated tools to analyze many political and economic features, but not systemic fragility.23 These provide useful insight, especially about political and economic outcomes and power dynamics, but do not focus on the cleavages that are the underlying issue in fragile states. The numerous existing indices and lists purportedly measuring fragility are not comparable as they do not attempt to produce comprehensive assessments for individual countries. They merely provide an ordinal ranking. Worse, these rankings are often based on a conflation of resilience (or luck) with true robustness—measuring outcomes rather than processes, they automatically characterize as nonfragile those states that have experienced stability, even if that stability belies significant weakness. These lists have repeatedly performed poorly in predicting conflict or state failure; many of the Arab countries now in turmoil (e.g., Libya, Bahrain) did not make these lists before 2011.24

The New Deal’s fragility assessments are much closer to the mark, but are still somewhat limited by how the PSGs frame the issues and likely to be compromised by being part of a highly political process. The first three PSGs emphasize goals—inclusive politics, security, and justice—that are much more likely to reduce fragility than those traditionally adopted by international actors. The last two PSGs (“economic foundations” and “revenues and services”), on the other hand, do not necessarily address fragility directly. Other issues critical to fragility—such as historical legacies, social cooperation, and transnational influences—are ignored by the PSGs. In any case, the New Deal calls on fragile states to assess their own progress in reducing fragility, which significantly reduces the prospects for objective and comprehensive assessment.

Although any tool will inevitably have limits to its predictive power, a framework that more correctly identifies precipitants rather than products of crisis could yield a policy toolbox capable of reducing the likelihood of conflict, fostering more inclusive politics, and producing greater prosperity across the heretofore fragile world.

The Country Fragility Assessment Framework aims to fill this gap. Based on over ten years of research on fragile states, it uniquely focuses on the forces that can drive a society together or apart. It does this by systematically analyzing twelve societal and institutional sources of fragility (see Table 2). This framework offers a guide for analyzing the context-specific challenges facing individual fragile states. The tool can also be used to roughly gauge a country’s degree of fragility in order to make cross-national and inter-temporal comparisons, though the highly qualitative nature of the metrics may limit the precision of such measurements. Even though the framework does not directly provide solutions, it does yield a toolbox of practicable policy options for local politicians, policymakers, NGOs, and civil society leaders as well as their international partners to better target fragility.

23 Some of the tools have been used to analyze fragile states from a political economic perspective. See http://www.gsdrc.org/go/fragile-states/chapter-3--measuring-and-assessing-fragility/measuring-fragility. But none focus on the sources of fragility as I do here.24 Kaplan, “Identifying Truly Fragile States,” 50–51.

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This approach is based on the understanding that fragile states are still relatively early in the long process of state consolidation, whereby they must integrate their various people and parts, and expand their capacity and resources to undertake increasingly demanding development tasks. In many cases, these states are the products of European colonialism, have no more than a few decades of state-building history behind them, and are trying to incorporate a more diverse array of social groups than anything previously attempted by richer more developed states in the West and in East Asia. In some cases, they are also trying to overcome a legacy of conflict between groups, partly a result of the way colonial powers ruled.

Most Arab states, for instance, never existed in their current form before World War I. When they did achieve independence after World War II, their new public officials lacked experience running countries. Many states—including Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Yemen, and Libya—are but amalgamations of tribes, clans, and various religious and ethnic groups with little loyalty to the state. The mixture of autocracy and political instability that holds back the region is both cause and effect of the shallowness of the consolidation of these states. In many ways, the region’s experience mirrors that of parts of Africa and Central Asia today, as well as Latin America’s earlier postcolonial history.

The CFAF gauges the forces working on the various groups and institutions that exist within these unconsolidated countries. Many of the issues it examines are structural in nature, making them hard though not impossible to change in the short term. Others are more amenable in the middle term. There are twelve components in all. Although all are a product of both of the two dimensions of fragility discussed above, five are largely influenced by societal factors and five are largely influenced by institutional factors. The other two are more a balanced combination of both dimensions.

Predominantly Influenced by Societal Sources

Political Dynamics covers how groups mobilize and what narrative drives their actions. When political organization and rhetoric become rooted in ethnic, religious, regional, or social identity divisions, a country is far more likely to be fragile (e.g., Iraq) than if political competition is conducted across such groups with leaders vying for roughly the same audience (e.g., Indonesia). This factor lies at the heart of fragility, as it strongly influences other factors and is strongly influenced by them in turn. If these other variables are not a problem, it is unlikely political dynamics will be either.

Historical covers how the past influences the actions of leaders and groups today. Rigid subnational identities, difficult population geographies (for example, different ethnic groups living in different parts of a country), and traumatic memories of conflict are all hard to change, especially in the short term. Any lingering resentment, trauma, or other grievance can make conflict much more likely (as in the Balkans, the Levant, and Africa’s Great Lakes region). It can also make the rise of sectarian or divisive leaders more likely. On the other hand, societies that have shared a long history as a nation—Egypt and Iran, for example—have a much stronger sense of nationhood, a powerful centripetal force.

Social Cooperation looks at the degree of cooperation of people on two levels: across different groups nationally, and locally within communities. Do marriages span social groups? Do members of different groups easily do business with each other? Do they live

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in the same neighborhoods? Play together? Go to school together? Are there many organizations that include people from different backgrounds? On an intragroup level, do communities adapt to social change (by, for instance, creating new institutions)? Do they find ways to offer youth satisfactory opportunities? Do indigenous groups cooperate with migrants to distribute public goods? If mistrust either between or within communities is high, then the capacity to bring people together to solve common problems will be limited. If anomie is common due to the breakdown of communal structures or large generation gaps, then more youth will join gangs or militant groups.

Horizontal Inequalities considers whether there are significant political, economic, and sociocultural inequalities (e.g., representation in government, quality of public services, land ownership, income levels, recognition of holidays, use of language) between major groups or regions. These—or at least the perception of these—have great consequences for whether people feel they are being treated justly, in turn affecting whether they believe the government is legitimate.

Transnational Influences looks at how the actions and ideas of actors beyond a countries borders impact its domestic dynamics. Certain countries are more often shaken by external shocks than are others. Geopolitics, for instance, plays a major role in the development of countries near Russia and influences the balance of power in divided countries such as Lebanon and Bahrain. It also plays a role in setting international norms on governance and human rights. Ideas—especially with regard to political ideology or religion—can span borders. Instability can be similarly contagious, as the conflicts in Libya and the Sahel illustrate. International markets can also have an impact, as when a rise in the price of food impoverishes part of a population or when a drop in oil prices weakens a government’s ability to distribute rents.

Predominantly Influenced by Institutional Sources

Effectiveness and Interaction of Institutions includes some areas that are widely studied, such as the ability of state institutions to deliver public goods (e.g., the rule of law), and others that are often overlooked (e.g., the interaction between customary and formal institutions). The more effective a country’s myriad formal and informal institutions—and the better they work together –the greater their capacity to deliver public goods and constructively arbitrate differences between groups, both essential to legitimacy.

Equity of Institutions looks at whether formal and informal institutions act inclusively or exclusively. Do they discriminate against or exclude certain groups or the poor? Do they unfairly allow one group to enrich itself at the expense of others? There is much overlap between this issue and the previous one, but they are separated because their causes and implications can differ substantially. The less equitably institutions act, the more resentment they will arouse, and the more divisive politics are likely to be.

Perceptions of Justice examines the extent to which groups believe that they are or have historically been treated fairly. Groups often have different criteria for judging fairness, whether grounded in respect, process, or inclusion and voice. Such perceptions, often historically rooted and sometimes starkly divergent from those of others in the same country, have great influence over how groups interpret various policies and programs. The better institutions are at providing equal opportunity for mediation and recourse, the

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more likely everyone will feel a sense of justice, and the state will be viewed as legitimate.

Security covers the pervasiveness of violence and the likelihood that it is employed by subnational political groups in pursuit of power. A sense of insecurity can easily weaken social cohesion and drive groups to reduce cooperation with each other out of fear. It can augment segregation (as in Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq during their wars), making cooperation even less likely. If any group uses coercion against other elements in society to intimidate or capture power—such as Hezbollah in Lebanon and the militaries in Egypt, Pakistan, and Myanmar—politics cannot be equitable. The state needs to have a monopoly of violence and exercise it in ways that are seen as legitimate across social groups.

Accountability Mechanisms look at the ability of formal and informal institutions and processes to hold leaders accountable. The institutions include organs of the state, such as courts and corruption prevention agencies, as well as non-state organizations, including civil society, political parties, and NGOs. The processes include elections, taxation, and the informal ties between leaders and populations. Norms can have an outsized impact here: Where public support of political leaders depends on their ability to uphold standards of conduct and due process, those groups that do not hold formal power are more likely to have their rights protected. Elsewhere, in places such as Iraq, Haiti, and Syria, leaders are only accountable to a subset of the population.

Combination of Both Dimensions

Breadth of Economic Activity examines how large (compared to the population) and inclusive is the economy, and thus the revenue base, of a country. If the dynamic part of an economy is large and furnishes a wide range of groups with opportunities, political actors are more likely to favor compromise and institutionalization that engenders stability. The smaller and narrower the base, the more likely leaders will be inclined to compete for its capture. A heavy reliance on natural resources, for instance, reduces political competition to a zero-sum game, giving leaders both the wherewithal and incentive to undermine institutions and social cooperation.

Behavior of Leaders examines whether political, economic, and social leaders act in ways that bring people together or whether they promote a narrow agenda that weakens cohesion and institutions. This depends largely on the effectiveness of various accountability mechanisms (including but not limited to elections) and whether these are broad-based and inclusive. Agency is important—and thus exceptional people (good or bad) can greatly impact social and institutional dynamics—but the other eleven issues of fragility constrain the set of choices available to leaders. Likewise, elite perceptions and behavior shape the other factors.

Many of these issues depend on the distribution of power, which is very unevenly distributed in fragile states; in many cases, a small number of important political, economic, social, and religious actors have a disproportionate influence on what their groups do, and what other groups are able to do. Ordinary citizens typically have little or no control over the state, and the state itself is limited in its ability to make or implement policy independent of a small set of elites.

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The relative importance of each category in causing fragility varies by country. In some, strong identity groups and starkly divided politics may be the biggest challenges (e.g., Iraq). In others, horizontal inequalities may create such anger that they matter most (e.g., Kenya). In yet others, weak institutions and insecurity make it very hard to bring groups together at all (e.g., Libya). However, none of these elements work in isolation. Instead, they tend to reinforce each other, either positively or negatively. The more insecurity there is, the more likely people will depend on their subnational (or supranational) identities and mistrust those from other groups. Similarly, the greater unresolved grievances or trauma are, the more likely political narratives will diverge. The less integration there is, the more likely institutions will work inequitably and horizontal inequalities will emerge. As such, action on multiple fronts is necessary to significantly alter these dynamics.

Table 2: Sources of Fragility

CATEGORY TYPE AREA OF ANALYSIS

Political Dynamics Societal

Political discourse—uniting or dividing at crucial moments

Political narrative—overarching or particular to each group

Political mobilization—by or across groups

Media—unified or separate for each group

Historical Societal

Historical legacies

Unresolved trauma

State organic or imposed?

Political geography

Rigidness of identity boundaries

Social Cooperation Societal

Relationships (personal/work/family) across or within groups

Political, economic, and social associations—across or within groups

Trust between groups

Socialization / integration of youth

Population movements (tensions with host communities)

Strength / flexibility of traditional institutions

Horizontal Inequalities Societal Political inequalities (e.g., representation in government, military, etc.)

Economic inequalities (e.g., quality of public

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services, land ownership, income levels, etc.)

Sociocultural inequalities (e.g., recognition of holidays, use of language, etc.)

What are the perceptions of groups related to political, economic, and sociocultural inequalities? Why do they differ from reality?

Transnational Influences Societal

How are regional events shaping elite behavior and population expectations?

Are external actors providing weapons and money to particular groups within a society?

How are prices for commodities affecting different segments of society?

How are transnational ideas and norms affecting how religious and political actors behave?

Effectiveness and Interaction of Institutions

Institutional

How well do institutions (state and non-state) deliver public goods? Are they relevant for the needs of the disadvantaged?

What is the quality of interactions among different institutions?

Can public and civil society institutions bring people together across cleavages?

How well do (often informal) local governance systems work with (formal) regional and national systems?

Are institutions robust enough to enforce elite commitments?

Equity of Institutions Institutional

Do state institutions act impersonally, equitably, and inclusively?

Do civil servants prioritize private over public?

Do different types of people receive different treatment from the state?

Do all groups and regions receive equal public services?

Perceptions of Justice Institutional How do elites and groups feel they are being treated by the state?

How do elites and groups feel they have been treated historically?

How effective are institutions at managing conflict?

What does justice mean to each group? Can they

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achieve it?

Security Institutional

Weapons/violence: How do they affect political competition?

Security of various groups

Does the state security apparatus favor any side?

Does the state have a monopoly on violence?

Accountability Mechanisms Institutional

How dependent is the state on taxes from the population and business?

How capable are institutions (including political parties, NGOs, courts, etc.) and processes (e.g., elections) of holding leaders accountable?

Do accountability mechanisms bring people together across groups or divide them by group?

What are widely accepted human rights norms?

Breadth of Economic Activity Both

Dependency on natural resources

Does one group dominate economic activity?

How diversified and broad is a country’s productive economic activity?

Can the economy generate opportunity for youth?

Behavior of Leaders Both

Do national leaders act inclusively or exclusively?

Do group leaders depend on or promote a sectarian agenda?

Do leaders of political parties and other major political organizations depend on broad or narrow support?

Are accountability mechanisms based on all groups or just one’s own?

In order to reduce bias in measurement, independent actors—affiliated neither with the governments of the countries being assessed or the development agencies implementing projects in them—should conduct fragility assessments. Yet, these assessments should be used to produce reports that engage a wide range of local stakeholders and international organizations to ensure they both reflect their concerns and maximize the chance that the results of the report will be widely used. They should take into account variations at different levels (national, regional, local) and in different parts of a society, and examine differences across the broad range of institutions, noting both islands of excellence and failure. Assessments should yield a comprehensive strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) analysis for each country as well as a set of short-term and long-term

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recommendations. Assessments should be repeated regularly to account for change over time.

Mapping the Components onto the PSGs

The CFAF provides a framework that can make more comprehensive and systematic the assessments that play a crucial role in the New Deal. It complements the PSGs and its twelve components can be mapped onto the five PSGs:

1) Legitimate Politics (foster inclusive political settlements and conflict resolution): Political Dynamics; Equity of Institutions; Horizontal Inequalities; Transnational Influences; Behavior of Leaders.

2) Security (establish and strengthen people’s security): Security; Social Cooperation; Transnational Influences.

3) Justice (address injustices and increase people’s access to justice): Perceptions of Justice; Historical; Effectiveness and Interaction of Institutions; Equity of Institutions.

4) Economic Foundations (generate employment and improve livelihoods): Breadth of Economic Activity; Social Cooperation; Effectiveness and Interaction of Institutions.

5) Revenues & Services (manage revenue and build capacity for accountable and fair service delivery): Accountability Mechanisms; Breadth of Economic Activity; Effectiveness and Interaction of Institutions.

Whereas the PSGs are distinct objectives, the CFAF components are interrelated. As such, some components play important roles in multiple PSGs; most play some role in all of them.

The CFAF can also be used to create indicators to measure progress towards the PSGs. Each component can be broken down into 5-10 questions (some listed above) for assessment, the combination of which generates a “score” for the factor. Combining the component tallies yields totals for the particular PSG. Of course, given the different emphases, these grades have different meanings from evaluations focused only on the five PSG goals. An approach blending measurements of progress on the phenomena examined in the Assessment Framework with measurements of progress on the PSGs would enable international actors to build upon their commitment to the g7+ process while providing a broader set of instruments to assess fragility.

Although the two can be used in a complementary fashion, the distinction between the CFAF and PSGs embodies the tension between two approaches to gauging the fragility of various countries. The PSGs focus on distinct outcomes, with little to say regarding how they might be achieved.25 In contrast, the CFAF focuses on the underlying dynamics that shape each state’s prospects for development. Outcomes are seen as products (or symptoms) of these dynamics. Each manifestation or symptom of fragility included in the Framework can be directly targeted with policies and programs (see below) in a way that

25 The New Deal fragility assessments can provide a more specific roadmap to achieve the PSGs—if done right. The country indicators the assessments yield may examine some of the same questions the components used above do, but do not as a whole focus on the same issues. See g7+, “Note on the g7+ Fragility Spectrum,” preliminary release, Kinshasa, Congo, November 27, 2013.

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the goals cannot. As such, the Framework provides more practicable information than do the PSGs.

Formal institutions and processes—including constitutions, courts, and elections—are likely to feature much more prominently in a goals-based approach than one focused on underlying societal and institutional dynamics. Without a specified mechanism by which a goal might be achieved, policymakers often draw upon their normative framework, which usually emphasizes formal institutions, to impute one. While the CFAF treats formal institutions seriously, it does not consider them the exclusive targets of policy intervention. Achieving goals such as accountability, human rights, and capable government often requires a broader societal focus than that allowed by conventional approaches.

Similarly, the eradication of corruption—often the chief target in a goals-based approach—is not directly emphasized in the CFAF. Corruption can be highly corrosive but appears in so many different guises that it is a poor indicator of how a state works; reducing the more destructive types of corruption should be a priority but other types of corruption may be much less problematic in the short-to-medium term.26

The differences between the goals-based approach and that advocated by the CFAF is partially cultural: whereas setting clear goals is a typical Western strategy to overcoming challenges, focusing on improving relationships and institutions is a typical strategy in many non-Western countries. The CFAF thus reflects a clear predisposition for a non-Western approach to peacebuilding and statebuilding; fragility can only be overcome when a society has achieved a certain degree of social harmony and consensus regarding the rules for coexistence.

Toolbox to Counter Fragility

One of the advantages of using the Country Fragility Assessment Framework is that by more specifically measuring the source of fragility, it readily conveys a toolbox of targeted policy and program options, each tool aimed at reducing a particular source of fragility. Many of these are currently used in some form, but are rarely if ever emphasized to the extent necessary or used in the systematic fashion necessary to reduce fragility; instead of being an integral part of a broader strategy, they often play a very secondary role.

Each broad issue and area can be connected to countermeasures to reduce fragility in a way that no other framework allows. For instance, if the quality of interactions among different institutions is deemed weak, a government, NGO, or donor could launch an initiative to improve it. In Somaliland, the government is documenting customary institutions, examining how they interact with the state, and considering how shifts in policy might build on the strengths of these institutions and ensure they work together effectively. In Ghana, the state is nurturing a hybrid system of justice by expanding the

26 For a good introduction to these many guises, see Andrew Wedeman, “Looters, Rent-Scrapers, and Dividend-Collectors: Corruption and Growth in Zaire, South Korea, and the Philippines,” The Journal of Developing Areas 31, No. 4 (Summer 1997): 457–78.

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use of informal dispute-resolution mechanisms and ensuring that they complement those of the state.27

If particularistic political mobilization exacerbates sectarianism, then country leaders could reform institutions and electoral rules to reduce this tendency. Nigeria and Indonesia have enacted electoral rules that require political parties to aggregate support across groups and regions and achieve a certain minimum breadth to gain power, forcing politicians to build coalitions. Alternatively, leaders could work together to develop and promote nationalistic political rhetoric to counter particularistic appeals, as Tanzania, Singapore, and Indonesia did following their independence. If unresolved trauma or resentment drives sectarianism, institutions of transitional justice, such as South Africa’s post-Apartheid Truth and Reconciliation Commission, could effectively address fragility. Of course, power plays a significant role in the dynamics that make countries fragile; meaningful reform is certain to encounter opposition from those whose power it challenges.

Balancing the short-term and the long-term is crucial in order to get policymaking right. While many of the factors require gradual change over a long time horizon, short-term triggers cause crises and must be actively managed. These may either be the result of shocks (e.g., price spikes or the death of a leader) or stresses that have built up over a long time horizon (such as social, demographic, or media change).28 Unfortunately, action aimed at reducing the impact of shocks often comes too late and sufficient action aimed at reducing longer-term threats never comes at all because many of the measures are hard to justify in the absence of a crisis.

Similarly, acknowledging the tradeoffs between different issues—and the political difficulties some pose—instead of assuming that all can be accomplished simultaneously is crucial to implementation. Some ought to be prioritized, while others ought to be set aside, at least in the short-term (unless they can trigger a crisis). The key will be to understand what might have the largest impact with the least pushback, as well as to examine what might encourage the creation of a more inclusive dynamic with the least risk.

Table 3 lists a broad range of practicable tools to address each source of fragility. It is not meant to be comprehensive, just indicative. There are many other tools that might work to address the individual items. Leaders and specialists who know a particular country well can choose the most salient before strategizing what combination makes sense given the context.

Table 3: Policy Toolbox to Reduce Fragility

CATEGORY TYPE POSSIBLE TOOLS

Political Dynamics Societal Change electoral rules to force political parties to

27 Richard Crook, “The State and Accessible Justice in Africa: Is Ghana Unique?” Africa Power and Politics, Overseas Development Institute, London, UK (2011).28 Huntington highlighted this dynamic in his early work. See Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1968).

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aggregate votes across groups and regions

Change institutional design to weaken presidency

Enact new media laws to reduce sectarian media

Historical Societal

Establish reconciliation and restorative justice programs

Bring people together around new inclusive national identity and narrative to counter negative sectarian narratives

Establish patriotic nation-building programs (e.g., national sports teams, national competitions, etc.)

Creatively change institutional design to better match political geography (by, for instance, using decentralization)

Social Cooperation Societal

Launch a national service scheme

Present soap operas and television shows that promote integration

Use government service as a way to promote integration

Establish job-training programs for youth

Launch cross-generational dialogues to better integrate youth into communities

Strengthen community-level institutions

Horizontal Inequalities Societal

Target inequalities for direct (e.g., affirmative action) or indirect (e.g., investments to broadly reduce) amelioration

Reduce political inequities—which have the strongest impact on perceptions

Recognize minority languages and holidays

Transnational Influences Societal

Provide temporary relief to governments or segments of a population hit hard by changes in prices

Reduce incentives for regional actors to intervene (e.g., inclusive politics; declare a country neutral)

Establish regional security mechanisms (e.g., ECOWAS) and norms or behavior (e.g., against coups, for human rights)

Coopt, rather than suppress, religious groups

Effectiveness and Interaction of Institutions

Institutional Establish commitment mechanisms to hold leaders accountable for their promises to others

Initiate a series of programs to improve the

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interface and interaction between different institutions

Establish international governance partnerships to increase the capacity of particular institutions

Establish civil society organizations that can bridge social divides and facilitate cooperation between groups

Equity of Institutions Institutional

Pass anti-discrimination laws

Decentralize power and resources to regions and/or communities

Expand citizenship to ensure it encompasses everyone in the country

Strengthen the autonomy of institutions particularly susceptible to capture

Perceptions of Justice Institutional

Establish truth and reconciliation commission to deal with grievances from the past

Ensure that all important state institutions have balanced leadership and employment

Foster transparency in budgeting and appropriation

Ensure that each group’s sense of justice is taken into account

Security Institutional

Ensure all political leaders enjoy equal protection

Provide incentives for military to stay out of politics

Promote accountable and professional values within all security and judicial organs

Reduce the amount of weaponry held by non-state actors

Accountability Mechanisms Institutional

Strengthen democratic institutions, processes, and culture

Broaden income and property tax base

Establish commitment enforcement mechanisms for elites; reinforce the judicial system

Use governance partnership agreements to build up institutions to hold leaders accountable

Build up the institutional capacity and cross-group representation of political parties, NGOs, etc.

Breadth of Economic Activity

Both Improve the entrepreneurial ecosystem

Take steps to make it easier for companies with no

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special connections to elites to operate

Ensure that business owners from all ethnic, religious, geographical, and social backgrounds have equal playing field

Introduce positive discrimination policies to offer minorities, women, etc. growing share of economic pie

Behavior of Leaders Both

Provide incentives for leaders to act more inclusively

Promote inclusive values found within local cultures

Encourage coalitions of inclusive actors and the isolation or marginalization of spoilers (where possible)

Change institutional and electoral design to promote collaboration across groups

Strengthen institutions that cut across groups and can create collective action to pressure leaders

Thinking Out of the Box

Just as the Washington Consensus failed to provide a roadmap to economic growth in all developing countries,29 the widely accepted set of Western statebuilding strategies has foreclosed promising alternative approaches. Fragile states require a pragmatic approach, one that acknowledges underlying sociopolitical and institutional dynamics. Many norms regarding what constitutes a successful state are morally sound but too narrowly interpreted. Instead of thinking about a fixed prescription of political and economic reform to sand down deviances from the norm, countries must look for creative approaches that address the particular sources of fragility that appear in each context. There are many more ways to enhance accountability, inclusiveness, equity, and justice than those offered by the Western template (to which the success of East Asia testifies).

Domestic and international policymakers need to be flexible and agile while taking a long-term perspective when looking to achieve these aims. Unfortunately, the trend in donor circles is towards short-term rigid programming amenable to impact evaluation—the very opposite of what is needed in fragile contexts.

The increasing international emphasis on fragility assessments reflects the growing awareness of the need to better target counter measures. The New Deal places assessments at the center of its agenda. The World Bank and leading donors are moving in this direction. The 2015 annual OECD report on fragile states repeatedly “highlights the need for new approaches to assessing and monitoring fragility using metrics that do

29 For an account of how financial institutions should move to more country-specific approaches to growth, see Dani Rodrik, “Goodbye Washington Consensus: Hello Washington Confusion?” Journal of Economic Literature, XLIV (December 2006): 973–87.

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not reduce fragility measures to a single index but rather allow for tracking across multiple (and potentially uncorrelated) dimensions.”30

Of course, because reform is inherently painful to those elements of society profiting from the status quo, success requires more than matching hypothetical reform to existing problem. Some issues will lend themselves more easily to a new approach (e.g., security, especially when it affects everyone), while others will not (e.g., equity of institutions, which may hurt some while helping others). Sometimes only interim or partial solutions are possible. Every situation is different: there is no fixed formula that will work everywhere. While some countries will have substantial obstacles to reform, the current success of countries such as Malaysia, Northern Ireland, Indonesia, and South Africa despite their histories of conflict shows what is possible even in difficult contexts. After deep social and economic divisions led to ethnic riots in the late 1960s, Malaysia’s government was motivated to put into practice policies that substantially reduced horizontal inequalities, broadened economic activity, and lowered the salience of identity in politics. South Africa’s 1994 transition to majority rule provided the impetus for broad changes in policy that reduced horizontal inequalities, broadened economic activity, addressed feelings of injustice, improved the equity of institutions, and improved social cooperation.

This approach has powerful implications for fragile states currently undergoing crises. It, for instance, highlights the true sources of Iraq’s disintegration: stark horizontal inequities, longstanding grievances, inequitable power-sharing arrangements, sectarian narratives, and chronic insecurity. Unless the country’s divisions are addressed on multiple fronts simultaneously—by, for instance, better integrating Sunnis into the country’s power structure, addressing grievances, creating an inclusive national narrative, establishing mechanisms to make commitments to minorities more credible, and redesigning electoral rules to force political parties to gain support from all major groups—it is unlikely that the country’s unwinding will be reversed.

Libya’s centrifugal forces can only be countered by a power-sharing arrangement that makes no major group feel excluded. Given its many political divisions, this probably requires a weak national government and strong city or regional governments. In a country that lacks an entity capable of holding powerful and potentially violent forces at bay, institutions must be established—probably in partnership with outside actors—to ensure that security is restored, commitments are kept, and a minimum level of rule of law is maintained.

In Nigeria, any solution to the spreading Boko Haram chaos must include a credible policy to address stark horizontal inequities, the feelings of resentment in the north, and the weaknesses of the security forces. Muslim leaders will have to establish a strong positive narrative to counter extremist views. If security forces cannot defend northern citizens, a set of regional or state guards may have to be established or outside actors brought in.

Bolstering deeply troubled states and societies such as Iraq, Libya, and Nigeria is a task both urgent and incredibly daunting. Recognizing the extent of the challenges and the diversity of fragile states illustrates that any generalized remedy for state fragility is no

30 OECD, States of Fragility 2015: Meeting Post-2015 Ambitions (Paris: OECD Publishing, 2015), 45.

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more credible than alchemy. Addressing state fragility in its many shapes requires understanding the specific dimensions of each country and tailoring policies that fit them.

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