Table of Contents

1. ‘Fragile States’: introducing a political concept 2. International Organisations and the Production of Hegemonic Knowledge: how the World Bank and the OECD helped invent the Fragile State Concept 3. The OECD’s discourse on fragile states: expertise and the normalisation of knowledge production 4. The European Union’s ambiguous concept of ‘state fragility’ 5. Measuring and managing ‘state fragility’: the production of statistics by the World Bank, Timor-Leste and the g7+ 6. How Sudan’s ‘rogue’ state label shaped US responses to the Darfur conflict: what’s the problem and who’s in charge? 7. State disintegration and power politics in post-Suharto Indonesia 8. When it pays to be a ‘fragile state’: Uganda’s use and abuse of a dubious concept 9. State fragility and failure as wicked problems: beyond naming and taming

About the Author

Sonja Grimm is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Politics and Public Administration, University of Konstanz, Germany. She publishes on democratization in post-conflict societies and democracy promotion and has co-edited special issues of Democratization on "War and Democratization" (2008) and "Do All Good Things Go Together? Conflicting Objectives in Democracy Promotion" (2012). More about her can be found at [www.sonja-grimm.eu].


Nicolas Lemay-Hébert is a Senior Lecturer in the International Development Department, University of Birmingham, UK. He is the co-editor of the Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding (with Florian Kuhn). His most recent book is "Semantics of Statebuilding: Language, Meanings and Sovereignty" (2014; co-edited with N. Onuf, V. Rakic, and P. Bojanic).


Olivier Nay is a Professor of Political Science at the University of Paris 1 - Panthéon Sorbonne, France. He is the Vice-president of the French Association of Political Science and the Chair of the Political Science section at the National Academic Council. He specializes on the reform of international organizations, bureaucratic change and the transnational diffusion of policy ideas. Please see [univ-paris1.academia.edu/OlivierNay].