The special issue 'Fragile States: A Political Concept' investigates the emergence, dissemination and reception of the notion of 'state fragility'. It analyses the process of conceptualisation, examining how the 'fragile states' concept was framed by policy makers to describe reality in accordance with their priorities in the fields of development and security. The contributors to the issue investigate the instrumental use of the 'state fragility' label in the legitimisation of Western policy interventions in countries facing violence and profound poverty. They also emphasise the agency of actors 'on the receiving end', describing how the elites and governments in so-called 'fragile states' have incorporated and reinterpreted the concept to fit their own political agendas. A first set of articles examines the role played by the World Bank, the OECD, the European Union and the g7+ coalition of 'fragile states' in the transnational diffusion of the concept, which is understood as a critical element in the new discourse on international aid and security. A second set of papers employs three case studies (Sudan, Indonesia and Uganda) to explore the processes of appropriation, reinterpretation and the strategic use of the 'fragile state' concept.
The concept of legitimacy has been highly influential in policy recommendations concerning state building in 'fragile states'. Indeed, depending on how 'legitimacy' is conceived, the actions and practices of state builders can differ substantially. This article discusses what is at stake in the conceptualisation of 'legitimacy' by comparing the academic literature with the normative production of the OECD. Looking at two approaches to legitimacy -the institutionalist or neo-Weberian approach focusing on institutional reconstruction, and the social legitimacy approach emphasising the importance of social cohesion for successful state building -the article shows that both these conceptions are present in most reports, but also that the neo-Weberian approach tends to prevail over the social legitimacy perspective. Through a series of interviews with OECD officials and scholar-practitioners who have participated in the writing process of OECD reports, we hint, finally, at future research avenues on the social conditions of knowledge production and its normalisation.
Abstract:More and more studies highlight the limits of state-building conducted 'from the top-down'. Building on the literature on the subject and using a Rosenauian concept in a novel way, this article posits that international interventions tend to create a
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