EXITING THE FRAGILITY TRAP:
Rethinking Our Approach to the World’s Most Fragile States
Part of the Series in Human Security
By David Carment and Yiagadeesen Samy,
Ohio University Press, 2019.
State fragility is a much-debated yet underinvestigated concept in the development and international security worlds. Based on years of research as part of the Country Indicators for Foreign Policy project at Carleton University, Exiting the Fragility Trap marks a major step toward remedying the lack of research into the so-called fragility trap. In examining the nature and dynamics of state transitions in fragile contexts, with a special emphasis on states that are trapped in fragility, David Carment and Yiagadeesen Samy ask three questions:
Why do some states remain stuck in a fragility trap?
What lessons can we learn from those states that have successfully transitioned from fragility to stability and resilience?
And how can third-party interventions support fragile state transitions toward resilience?
Carment and Samy consider fragility’s evolution in three state types: countries that are trapped, countries that move in and out of fragility, and countries that have exited fragility. Large-sample empirical analysis and six comparative case studies—Pakistan and Yemen (trapped countries), Mali and Laos (in and out countries), and Bangladesh and Mozambique (exited countries)—drive their investigation, which breaks ground toward a new understanding of why some countries fail to see sustained progress over time.
ISBN-10: 0821423908
ISBN-13: 978-0821423905
Reader Reviews
“In this volume, David Carment and Yiagadeesen Samy, building on their previous extensive research, offer new insights into the dynamics that ensnare countries in fragility traps and suggest strategies for exiting those traps. This excellently researched book and the authors’ accessible writing style make it of keen interest and relevance for the academic research and foreign policy communities alike.”
—Derick Brinkerhoff, Distinguished Fellow Emeritus, RTI International, and Associate Faculty, George Washington University, Trachtenberg School of Public Policy and Public Administration.
“A lot of research has focused on the causes and correlates of state fragility. This book provides new and important insight into transitions toward resilience. Drawing on cross-national data and case studies, there is so much here to enrich the debate, including key implications for policy.”
—Rachel M. Gisselquist, UNU-WIDER
“Carment and Samy offer a theoretically innovative and empirically rich analysis of the fragility trap. Their insights are a welcome contribution to scholarship on fragile states and, critically, to policymaking.”
—Stefan Wolff, University of Birmingham
Other Books Published By Yiagadeesen Samy
