engaging fragile states - Woodrow Wilson International Center for ...

FOREWORD
The Project on Leadership and
Building State Capacity
Steve McDonald, Consulting Director
On June 5, 2009, the Wilson Center’s Project on Leadership and
Building State Capacity hosted a major day-long conference
entitled “Preventing and Rebuilding Failed States amid Global
Economic Crisis: What are Realistic Options for US Policy?” The
goal of the conference was to provide a starting point for fostering
more coherence among all actors involved in fragile and failing
states. Positioned on the cutting edge of research on conflict and
state fragility, with the goal of tapping into a rich and relevant body
of recent research that the policy community has not applied,
the conference brought together members of the Wilson Center
community, leading scholars, NGO practitioners, and US, UN, and
other policymakers from the donor community to present and
participate in a series of panels and roundtable discussions. The
focus was a review of recent research on what types of programs are
most suited to differing stages of conflict and state fragility, what
are the strengths and limits of economic reform in such contexts,
what is the appropriate sequencing of state-building objectives
such as security, political power-sharing, and job creation, and how
to rethink democracy promotion.