Fixing Fragile States: A New Paradigm for Development Kaplan, Seth D.

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.

DOI: 10.1336/0275998282 Mouse over the Digital Object Identifier (DOI) to learn more about this book or related books published by Greenwood Publishing Group. Visit the Greenwood Publishing Group page for this title: http://www.greenwood.com/catalog/C9828.aspx

Fixing Fragile States: A New Paradigm for Development Hardback, 232 pages, $65.00 Copyright ©2008, Praeger Security International Academic Cloth ISBN: 0-275-99828-2 DOI: 10.1336/0275998282

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