The central research questions to be answered are:

1) Why and how, under conditions of late development, are some fragile states able to respond effectively to contestation while others collapse and/or experience large-scale violence?

2) What are the factors that contribute to and impede state reconstruction in post-war periods?

We have chosen a set of 8 fragile states to study in detail.   These include states which experienced collapse but where reconstruction is well underway, states which survived despite significant armed challenge to state authority, states which have experienced recent war and collapse and where the future is uncertain and a set of states which have avoided significant episodes of violent conflict or war, despite poor performance in other areas of governance.  Primary case studies will be Uganda, Rwanda, Afghanistan, DR Congo, Colombia, Mozambique, Tanzania and Zambia, with secondary studies of Lebanon, Angola, Tajikistan, Philippines, Nigeria, Pakistan and Ecuador.  We aim to explain whether, at a given time, a state is moving towards collapse or away from it and what causes such movement.  We will evaluate the conditions of the state by examining the process of institutional change and contestation across five sub-systems: security and administrative, legal, political and economic management.  In fragile states, each of these domains is contested territory, where the authority of state actors and the formal institutions through which they rule, are challenged by various non-state actors, who are often anchored in alternative institutional arrangements.   These patterns of institutional multiplicity are central objects of our investigation.

When analysing the performance of state actors and non-state rivals at different points in time, we will consider the evolution of capacity - the abilities and skills of personnel and the organisational culture, including the ability to win popular support and to extend territorial presence.   We will examine the shifting patterns of influencing that link societal actors to the state i.e. legal institutional arrangements, informal patron-client networks, illegal forms of rent-seeing or corruption and political violence.  We will consider the relationships between alternative forms of influencing and state capture and the mechanisms through which a decline in the first three forms of influencing may contribute to the rise of political violence.

In order to explain why political violence can escalate into state collapse, we will employ coalitional analysis, paying attention to the shifting constellations of power that underpin formal and informal institutional arrangements that govern the exercise of different forms of authority within society.  The research will examine how shifting coalitions of power either contribute to state collapse, are forged in order to prevent collapse, or emerge as a result of state collapse and war where they can either help or hinder state reconstruction.

We will place central importance on understanding the political economy of conflict over time as we consider this to be central to understanding the prospects for peace-building.  In particular, an examination of the economic structure underlying conflict is crucial to understanding the extent to which there are interdependencies amongst the antagonists.  In situations where conflicts are based on more indivisible stakes, it may be necessary to inject significant resources across contending groups in order to maintain political legitimacy and stability.  In this case, insufficient donor injections of resources may amount to battling a large fire with too few hoses.