Introduction

Abstract

Conventional wisdom on “governance and political adaptation in fragile states” has focused largely on the shortcomings of the governance models of fragile states. This volume tells another story: the story of resilience in the various ways that fragile states (or states with limited statehood) in Africa, South Asia, the South Pacific, and Central America have adopted, and adapted to, the processes of liberal political governance in their quests to address the problem of political fragility. These adaptive institutionalized creations have included public sector reforms, the adoption of gender responsive governance, the promotion of multiparty political participation, improved justice systems, stringent anti-graft laws, the empowerment of local/grassroots organizations and the broadening of civil society participation, and the ratification of international conventions on responsible governance, and interstate peer-to-peer governance mechanism. In addition to singular or comparative country case studies, this volume examines the interplay of culture (cultures that have been deemed antithetical to Western notions of governance) and politics in the creation of people-centric governance reforms. The theoretical foundations of this volume, which all contributing authors used in their examination of the multi-faceted dimensions of governance in their respective case studies, are the concepts of “political adaptation” and “state resilience.”