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Fragile States: exploring the concept
16/12/2006 By Susan Woodward
Where the culprit for both poverty and violations of human rights since the early 1980s had been the strong state (whether authoritarian, democratic but unaccountable, or interventionist in the interests of development), the problem by the 1990s had become the weak state.
Susan Woodward focuses on three aspects of this new agenda: the issue, the concept, and the challenges that fragile states present for the programming of assistance.
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Keywords
Civil society Democratisation Fragile stateBio author: Susan Woodward
Professor of Political Science, The Graduate Center, City University of New York. A specialist on the Balkans, her current research focuses on transitions from war to peace, state failure, and post-war state-building.
