 The resilient state: new regulatory modes in international approaches to state building?Jan Pospisil and Florian P. Kühn Third World Quarterly, 2016, vol. 37, issue 1, 1-16 Abstract: ‘Resilience’ has quickly risen to prominence in international security and development circles. In recent years it has found its way into political discourse on state building and state fragility, triggering a vast but often conceptually indistinct examination of the subject. Given its meaning in policy publications and guidelines, ‘resilience’ tends to eschew a static conceptualisation of statehood, turning instead to a more dynamic, complex and process-oriented rendering of state–society relations. This illustrates a conceptual shift from ‘failed states’ to ‘fragile states and situations’. It also transforms the concept of ‘failed state’ as a mere threat perception – with ‘stability’ as its logical other – into ‘fragility’ as a particular form of social and political risk. This paper analyses the concepts in 43 policy papers, focusing on the nexus of ‘resilience’ and ‘fragility’ in international state building, and assesses potential consequences. What does ‘resilience’ – as the opposite vision to ‘fragility’ – in fact mean? What is the practice derived from this chimerical state of states? Date: 2016 Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:ctwqxx:v:37:y:2016:i:1:p:1-16 Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from DOI: 10.1080/01436597.2015.1086637 Access Statistics for this article Third World Quarterly is currently edited by Shahid Qadir More articles in Third World Quarterly from Taylor & Francis Journals |
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