How regions, countries, and localities have confronted and overcome their own challenges is instructive for leaders and citizens facing challenges today. Drawing on both historical analysis and lessons from its work advising leaders, ISE continues to document a diverse set of cases of transformation and reforms. These cases provide insight into how leaders and citizens developed a reform agenda, the policies and institutions advanced reforms, how the market and citizens were engaged, and what communications strategies were employed. Explore the Country Transition and Transformation paper series for our analysis of successful transformations.
The Country Transitions and Transformations series charts how regions, countries, and localities have confronted and overcome the challenges of statebuilding. The case studies explore the economic, social, and political dynamics of large-scale transformations, offering key insights into “what works” for tackling the pressing issues of today. Cases range from the making of Turkey’s modern state to state-level reform in India and Finland’s consensus-building citizenship model. View the entire series here.
ISE’s country stocktakings evaluate opportunities for reform during pivotal periods in a country’s development trajectory. Stocktakings diagnose countries’ open moments and pathways for reform by assessing the performance and capability of various state functions and citizens’ view of the state while mapping the various international partners operating in the country and the alignment of key stakeholders around a potential reform agenda. View the Country Stocktaking series here.
The conflicts in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and Libya have caused untold levels of damage, resulted in significant loss of life, decimated the physical assets of the countries, and ripped apart social fabrics. Under the most…
The challenge of addressing conditions of fragility remains central from the perspectives of development and security. Fragility is a shared problem for the research, policy, and implementation communities, but too often researchers fail to produce…
The massive proliferation of data has fundamentally changed the systems of modern governance and development. Leveraging sustainable and cohesive data ecosystems, and understanding the limits of data’s use, are unique challenges for country-led transformations that…
This is a follow-up note to the ISE Development Practice Note on the consequences of donor-induced fragmentation, which argued that the way development partners have managed their ODA spending and development programs has resulted in…
Read Clare Lockhart’s article ‘Sovereignty Strategies: Enhancing Core Governance Functions as a Postconflict & Conflict-Prevention Measure’ in the AAAS Special Issue of Daedalus.
The current terms of foreign assistance mean that it often falls short of the goal of supporting countries on their development paths. The New Deal for Engagement in Fragile States, endorsed in 2011, represents a…