Nation building successes and failures matter to the EU and OECD

Nation building successes and failures matter to the EU and OECD

By Dominic Rohner, Professor of Economics, Faculty of Business and Economics (HEC Lausanne), University of Lausanne, and Research Fellow, the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR)

From Syria to Libya, Somalia to Yemen, today more than 50 nations are categorised as fragile states. With a number sitting very close to the EU’s borders, it’s impossible to argue that these countries and the difficulties they face exist in a vacuum from the rest of the world.

As conflict, extremism, and poverty increase due to states falling into “failed” or “failing” categories – the ripple effects are not only tragic for the domestic population but also felt way beyond their borders.

It follows that, to help the EU achieve greater integration and assist its institutions bolster fragile neighbours and partner states, we need a greater understanding of what makes some states thrive, while others slide from fragility to outright collapse. Continue reading Nation building successes and failures matter to the EU and OECD

Like it or not: coercive power is essential to development

By Erwin van Veen, Lead Levant Research Programme, Senior Research Fellow, Conflict Research Unit at Clingendael

Understanding the political economy of coercion is essential to achieving developmental gains in countries at the lower end of stability and institutional performance. Surprisingly, this matter rarely features on the development agenda, which means the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals continues to suffer in such countries.

If national development is defined as the long-term, collective pursuit of the highest level of wellbeing for the greatest number of citizens, it is a deeply political and highly contested process by default. That is in part because all these components are subject to varying definitions. What is the collective? What is wellbeing? Who is a citizen and what are their rights? Different countries offer starkly different answers to such questions. But beyond definitions, there are also more commonplace reasons for development being such a political undertaking.

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Democracy is a public good. What is the development community doing about it?

By Anthony Smith, CEO of the Westminster Foundation for Democracy (WFD)


Democracy has been undervalued by the development community. I understand why – I am a child of decolonisation and its political economy of liberation, and my introduction to international development was through the target-driven Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). But I have come down firmly on the side of Amartya Sen’s view on the timing of democracy.  He said: “A country does not have to be deemed fit for democracy; rather, it has to become fit through democracy.” For too long, some in the donor community have been ambivalent about this, wanting proof that development goals would be reached faster in democracies than in autocracies and implying that democracy could wait. For too many of us, the politics of our partner country was just a factor to be navigated around to avoid disrupting our programmes.

Continue reading “Democracy is a public good. What is the development community doing about it?”