‘Fragile and conflict-affected states’ (FCAS) constitute an increasingly important category of aid policy and action. This paper argues that the category comprises a large and heterogeneous set of countries, problematizing coherent policy response which is often awkwardly split between boilerplate strategy and case-by-case approach. In both respects, efficiency of aid allocations is questionable. There is a need to disaggregate the category into smaller groups of countries, understood according to a more nuanced interpretation of the nature of their fragility. Disaggregation, however, is challenging insofar as it is hard to find a stable reference point internal to the category by which states’ relative performance – and causes of performance – can be determined. An alternative approach is to seek a reference point external to the entire FCAS category – for example a multilateral initiative – which allows exploring systematic differences between those who sign up and those who do not.
This research took the UN’s Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) initiative as such a mechanism. Splitting FCAS into two groups – those who had joined SUN within its initial two-year phase and those who had not – we reviewed a range of social, economic, political, institutional and conflict/instability indicators to identify areas of significant difference. An unexpected finding was that while SUN-joiners performed statistically better on governance, there was no difference between joiners and non-joiners on the level of instability and violence they suffered, suggesting that some countries, even at high levels of conflict disruption, can achieve areas of relatively good governance.
Key findings:
- Core assumptions about governance and instability – and the possibility of effective government in these circumstances – should be urgently reviewed. The sometimes overwhelming scepticism regarding government capacity to provide governance in FCAS is often as unwise as it is poorly-informed. One thing we know from the current classification of ‘fragile and conflict-affected states’ is that the category includes a broad spectrum of conditions – from states with relatively robust systems but political or regime instability, to states with extreme limits on sovereignty or capacity. Rarely, however, can a fragile state do nothing. Indeed, the very malleability of state institutions in periods of instability can be viewed as an opportunity – rather than necessarily a risk – for positive external influence. If donors and partners are serious about the Busan commitments (and everything that predates them), they are obligated to seek out and nurture those aspects of state in which FCAS governments show themselves willing and able in spite of social, economic, political and military challenges.
- In practical terms, it should be possible to assemble a range of data on specific aspects of governance performance and government capacity, using both ‘internal’ scores on bureaucratic systems and controls as well as ‘external’ scores on public perception of the impact of these on people’s everyday lives. Establishing median scores would support the identification of strategic areas within government where performance is unusually strong, and more refined targets for the allocation of aid to build out on such areas. This research, for example, identified a cluster of indicators associated with intersectoral and cross-government policy coherence, in which SUN joiners significantly out-performed their non-SUN counterparts. The conclusion – in particular where the political settlement of conflict can result in a fragmented government with different sectors held by formerly opposing groups – is that allocating aid in ways that foster and extend intersectoral coordination within recipient fragile states may have been particularly effective, regardless of wider instability, in engendering or extending capacity among SUN joiners to generate coherent action on the problem of undernutrition.
- There is a danger that the current orientation of donors to fragile and conflict-affected states, as a category, becomes self-fulfilling in individual cases. Assumed weakness in governance drives donors to allocate aid outside government, or only tangentially through it, weakening state capacity and legitimacy and even amplifying intersectoral competition and incoherence. Short-term humanitarian interventions are unsustained, failing to flow through into long-run improvements in human development conditions on the ground, while bypassed government remains on the sideline. Unimproved governance capacity, weak legitimacy, and patchy and short-run delivery at the level of households and communities feed through into social unrest, political instability and the rising risk of violent challenge for control of the state itself.