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State Fragility and Governance: Conflict Mitigation and Subnational Perspectives
Author(s) -
Brinkerhoff Derick W.
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
development policy review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.671
H-Index - 61
eISSN - 1467-7679
pISSN - 0950-6764
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-7679.2011.00529.x
Subject(s) - corporate governance , decentralization , political science , state (computer science) , fragility , service delivery framework , mechanism (biology) , quality (philosophy) , public administration , economic system , service (business) , business , economics , law , philosophy , chemistry , finance , marketing , epistemology , algorithm , computer science
Many drivers of intrastate conflict concern the relationship between the state and society, and thus are influenced by the quality of governance. Efforts to restore or create good governance, however, have adopted a relatively standardised democratising template. This article argues that conflict mitigation is a useful mechanism for adapting this template to conditions in fragile states. Furthermore, subnational reforms have important potential to mitigate the drivers identified in quantitative studies of conflict, as illustrated by selected experiences with decentralisation, citizen participation and local service delivery. The analysis confirms the important contributions both of quantitative research that has identified causal factors driving conflict and of qualitative study that has explored governance reforms that can address those factors.