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Fixing Fragile States A New Paradigm for Development

Seth D. Kaplan

ISBN: 0-275-99828-2

ISBN-13: 978-0-275-99828-8

DOI:

232 pages

Praeger Publishers

Publication: 6/30/2008

List Price: $65.00 (UK Sterling Price: £44.95)

Availability: In Stock

Media Type: Hardcover

Also Available: Ebook

Trim Size: 6 1/8 x 9 1/4

Subjects:

Series Title: Praeger Security International

Reviews:

This is a stimulating contribution to a growing literature on how to deal with fragile states.
—Foreign Affairs November/December 2008

Description: Fragile states are a menace. Their lawless environments spread instability across borders, provide havens for terrorists, threaten access to natural resources, and consign millions of people to poverty. But Western attempts to reform these benighted places have rarely made things better. Kaplan argues that to avoid revisiting the carnage and catastrophes seen in places like Iraq, Bosnia, and the Congo, the West needs to rethink its ideas on fragile states and start helping their peoples build governments and states that actually fit the local landscape. Fixing Fragile States lays bare the fatal flaws in current policies and explains why the only way to give these places a chance at peace and prosperity is to rethink how development really works. Flawed governance systems, not corrupt bureaucrats or armed militias, are the cancers that devour weak states. The cure, therefore, is not to send more aid or more peacekeepers but to redesign political, economic, and legal structures-to refashion them so they can leverage local traditions, overcome political fragmentation, expand governance capacities, and catalyze corporate investment.

After dissecting the reasons why some states prosper and others sink into poverty and violence, Fixing Fragile States visits seven deeply dysfunctional places—including Pakistan, Bolivia, West Africa, and Syria—and explains how even the most desperate of them can be transformed.

Table of Contents:

List of Tables, Charts, and Maps
Preface
Acknowledgments
Part I Introduction
1. Introduction: Why Fragile States Matter
Part II Diagnosis
2. Fostering Development: The Missing Ingredients
3. Fragile States, Fractured Societies
Part III Prescriptions
4. A New Paradigm for Development
Part IV Application
5. West Africa: Stitching a Fragmented Region Together
6. The Democratic Republic of the Congo: Constructing the State Bottom Up
7. Syria: Countering Sectarianism with Unifying Institutions
8. Somaliland: Reconnecting State and Society
9. Bolivia: Building Representative Institutions in a Divided Country
10. Pakistan: Redirecting a Countrys Trajectory
11. Azerbaijan: Pressing Reform on an Autocracy
Index

About the Author: Seth D. Kaplan is a business consultant who has run multinational firms and founded successful local corporations in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. His articles on fragile states and development have appeared in the Washington Quarterly, Orbis, the Wall Street Journal, and the New York Times.

PDF Catalogs:
Academic Library Fall 2008.pdf	PSI Catalog Fall 2008.pdf


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