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Assignment 1: Editing "Fragile state"

International intervention or autonomous recovery

Debates have been among scholars if post-conflict reconstruction intervention is the best strategy for state-building in fragile states. It is widely believed that multilateral intervention can interrupt the conflict trap of fragile states and set countries on a path toward postwar economic and political development. Responding to failure of governance in fragile states, scholars have proposed new models of intervention, including neo-trusteeship and shared sovereignty. Supporters of International intervention encourage interventions led by the major powers or regional actors with the greatest national security or economic interest in restoring stability and democracy to the fragile state. They support developing agreements that authorize international intervention whereby the costs of third-party peacekeeping and state building would increasingly be borne by the state being reconstructed. 

Another kind of opinion has been autonomous recovery - fragile states can recover from conflict in the absence of intervention, and may be able to develop effective institutions of government out of warfare. Supporters of autonomous recovery argue that international assistance and external support undermines the self-sustaining nature of the compact between rulers and constituents. Examples of Uganda, Eritrea, and Somalia support the theory of autonomous recovery, where these weak states successfully achieved a lasting peace, a systematic reduction in violence, and post-war political and economic development in the absence of international intervention.

Assignment 2：Editing "Failed state"

Add some contents and make adjustments to the order of the paragraphs

Capability Traps of Failed States

Capability trap means that countries progressing at a very slow pace in the expansion of state capability even in the contemporary world, which is also the core problem of failed states. Many countries remain stuck in conditions of low productivity that many call “poverty traps.” Economic growth is only one aspect of development; another key dimension of development is the expansion of the administrative capability of the state, the capability of governments to affect the course of events by implementing policies and programs. Capability traps close the space for novelty, establishing fixed best-practice agendas as the basis of evaluating failed states. Local agents are therefore excluded from the process of building their own states, implicitly undermining the value-creating ideas of local leaders and front line workers. 

Matt, Lant and Woolcock from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government proposed an approach called the "Problem Driven Iterative Adaptation (PDIA)", to escaping the capability traps.  Given that many development initiatives fail to improve performance because they promote isomorphic mimicry, PDIA focuses on solving locally nominated and prioritized performance problems of failed states. It involves pursuing development interventions that engage broad sets of local agents to ensure the reforms are politically supportable and practically implementable.

Promoting Democracy and Combating Terrorism in Failed States

Promoting Democracy in Post-Conflict and Failed States

Larry Diamond (2006) argues that weak and failed states pose distinctive problems for democracy promotion. In these states, the challenge is not only to pressure authoritarian state leaders to surrender power but rather to figure out how to regenerate legitimate power in the first place.

There are three distinct types of cases, and each of these three types of cases requires specific kinds of strategies for democracy promotion:

1. The post-conflict states that are emerging from external or civil war.  Many of these countries have been in Africa—South Africa, Mozambique, Sierra Leone, Somalia.  Some have been in Latin America (Nicaragua, El Salvador, indeed much of Central America), in Asia (e.g. Cambodia and one hopes now Sri Lanka), and in the Middle East (Lebanon, Algeria, and Iraq);
2. Countries that are in the midst of civil war or ongoing violent conflict, where central state authority has largely collapsed, as in the Democratic Republic of the Congo;
3. States that are at severe risk of large-scale internal violence, because of weak or weakening state authority and capacity, high levels of crime and privatized violence, and increasing polarization of domestic politics (e.g. Nigeria).

Generally speaking, Order is the most important perquisite for democracy promotion, which relies on formal democratic mechanisms, particularly elections to promote post-conflict state-building. In the absence of an effective state, there are basically three possibilities: If there has been a civil war and a rebel force has ultimately triumphed, then the vacuum may be filled by the rebellious army and political movement as it establishes control over the state; Second, there may be a patchwork of warlords and armies, with either no real central state (as in Somalia) or only a very weak one, as in Afghanistan. In this situation, the conflict does not really end, but may wax and wane in decentralized fashion, as in Afghanistan today; The third possibility is that an international actor or coalition of actors steps in to constitute temporary authority politically and militarily. This may be an individual country, a coalition, an individual country under the thin veneer of a coalition, or the United Nations acting through the formal architecture of a UN post-conflict mission.