Book
Fragile Aid

Development Cooperation in Weak States and Conflict Contexts

ESTIMATED FOR OPEN ACCESS ONLINE PUBLICATION ON 3 APRIL 2025 | An important question for the future of aid concerns its role in weak states and conflict contexts. While considerable research points to a mixed record of effectiveness in these contexts, the imperative of external support for development and humanitarian needs persists.

Bringing together findings from a diverse set of expert analyses, this volume sheds new light on the record of aid under fragility, spotlighting two key implications for research and practice going forward. 

First, more systematic unpacking of the considerable diversity that exists across fragile contexts is needed to better understand past experience and its lessons for future practice. Second, the aid effectiveness principles provide important insight into how aid can be improved, but there are fundamental challenges to their application in weak states and conflict contexts. In sum, the world urgently needs better aid, not less aid.

Front cover of Fragile Aid

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Editor

Rachel M. Gisselquist

Patricia Justino

Andrea Vaccaro

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April 2025

Oxford University Press,

© UNU-WIDER 2025

Table of contents
  1. PART I: INTRODUCTION
    1. Development Cooperation under Fragility: Evidence from across the Globe
    Rachel M. Gisselquist, Patricia Justino, Andrea Vaccaro
  2. PART II: WAYS FORWARD IN WEAK STATES AND CONFLICT SITUATIONS
    2. What Aid Works (or Not) in Highly Fragile States? Evidence from Afghanistan, Mali, and South Sudan, 2008–21
    Christoph Zürcher
    More Working Paper | Evidence on aid (in)effectiveness in highly fragile states
  3. 3. Fragile States in an Era of Geopolitical Rivalry, Pandemic, and War: Insights from the Country Indicators for Foreign Policy
    David Carment, Yiagadeesen Samy
    More Working Paper | Aid effectiveness in fragile and conflict-affected contexts
  4. 4. Can Aid Reduce Violence?
    Anke Hoeffler
    More Working Paper | Aid and violence reduction
  5. PART III: OWNERSHIP AND SOCIAL CONTRACT IN WEAK STATES AND CONFLICT SITUATIONS
    5. Southern Perspectives on Effective Development Cooperation: Rethinking Country Ownership
    Debapriya Bhattacharya, Towfiqul Islam Khan, Najeeba Mohammed Altaf
    More Working Paper | Unpacking ‘ownership’ in development co-operation effectiveness
  6. 6. Rethinking the Relationship between Community-Driven Reconstruction and the Social Sciences: Lessons from Afghanistan
    Jennifer Brick Murtazashvili
    More Working Paper | The experimented society: interventions, social science, and the failure of post-conflict reconstruction in Afghanistan
  7. 7. Why Is It Important to Use a Social Contract Lens for Donor Interventions in Somalia?
    Gaël Raballand, Deborah Isser, Hodan Hassan, Mathieu Cloutier
    More Working Paper | Understanding Somalia’s social contract and state-building efforts
  8. 8. Local Participation in the Context of National Ownership: The Playing out of Aid Nurtured Ideals in Rwanda and Cambodia
    Malin Hasselskog, Vedaste Ndizera, Joakim Öjendal
    More Working Paper | Connecting national ownership and local participation in aid recipient countries
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Context

Project
The state and statebuilding in the Global South – international and local interactions
Keywords