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Capacity development in fragile environments in Africa has often proven to be a complex undertaking. This has largely been because of existing knowledge gaps on what exactly causes fragility of states, the economy and society. The liberal peace development model that generally informs post‐conflict reconstruction and capacity development has a limited conception of fragility by narrowly focusing on the national dimensions of the problem, promoting donor‐driven solutions, emphasizing minimal participation of beneficiary actors in the identification and prioritization of capacity development needs, and by subcontracting the design and management of projects and programs. The resulting capacity development impact has generally been disappointing. In the absence of homegrown strategic plans, stakeholder participation and ownership, international development partners have all too often addressed capacity gaps by financing training, supply of equipment and professional exchanges of parliamentarians and parliamentary staffers. These efforts usually achieved their presumed number targets but tended to ignore addressing the larger issues of political economy within which capacity development take place. However, the recent re‐conceptualization of parliamentary capacity development as a development of nationally owned, coordinated, harmonized, and aligned development activities seems to be gaining growing attention in Africa. As the experience of Rwanda eloquently demonstrates, capacity development is essentially about politics, economics and power, institutions and incentives, habits and attitudes – factors that are only partly susceptible to technical fixes and quantitative specifications. These structural factors have to be negotiated carefully and tactfully.

Fragile states (FS) are often neglected and categorized as “aid orphans”. In extreme circumstances, they are loaded with aid beyond their absorptive capacity. However, whether they receive little or too much, there is a compelling imperative to coordinate aid aimed at capacity development effectively. In an ever shrinking pot of funds from donors mainly due to the current global economic downturn, it is extremely important to coordinate and harmonise aid delivery. FS cannot afford to waste any money trapped under rubble of multi‐donor aid bureaucracy. Due to the multidimensional nature of fragility, we draw on case studies and interdisciplinary insights from Authority‐Legitimacy‐Capacity (ALC), Country Development Framework (CDF) and other models and frameworks of donor coordination. A number of asymmetries (e.g. technical, cultural and, financial) between donors and recipients need to be addressed. Donors can harmonise their respective Africa strategies reports and give priority to infrastructure instead of focusing exclusively on the social agenda as in the past. FS should fight the local culture of corruption, avoid fungibility, protect vulnerable groups in society, focus on reintegration as well as demobilizing ex‐combatants with employment provisions. Donors should not give mixed signals to recipients and need to be flexible in their operational procedures. Finally, we discuss the implications of key emerging issues that threaten or facilitate sustainable reconstruction, development and poverty reduction in post‐conflict environments.

The fragile states and stabilisation concepts appear to resonate with the concept of community resilience. Yet, there is barely a framework that integrates the three concepts. The authors posit that despite the increasing interest in community resilience in fragile states, there is much less clarity of resilience, fragility and stabilisation connections. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

This paper is based on the literature review of the concepts of community resilience, fragility and stabilisation.

The findings restate that the state fragility results from the breakdown of the social contract between the state and its citizens. Whilst both resilience and stabilisation are desirable constructs in reducing fragility, they should be broadly underpinned by agency not only to enhance preventive, anticipatory, absorptive and adaptive actions but also lead to social transformative capacity where agency is embedded for communities to exercise some sort of power to foster change.

This paper has encourages debate on resilience, fragility and stabilisation connections by suggesting framework for “doing” resilience-informed stabilisation programmes in fragile states. The framework, which may not necessarily be approached in a linear fashion, has three major components: identifying existing resilience factors, enhancing and sustaining these and delivering resilient communities. However, there is need to test the utility of the framework in practice.

The purpose of this paper is to assess the determinants of state fragility in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) using hitherto unexplored variables in the literature.

The previously missing dimension of nation building is integrated and the hypothesis of state fragility being a function of rent seeking and/or lobbying by de facto power holders is tested.

The resulting interesting finding is that political interference, rent seeking and lobbying increase the probability of state fragility by mitigating the effectiveness of governance capacity. This relationship (after controlling for a range of economic, institutional and demographic factors) is consistent with a plethora of models and specifications. The validity of the hypothesis is confirmed in a scenario of extreme state fragility. Moreover, the interaction between political interferences and revolutions mitigates the probability of state fragility while the interaction between natural resources and political interferences breeds the probability of extreme state fragility.

There are two main policy implications. First, political interference, rent seeking and lobbying are likely to increase the fragility of SSA nations. Second, there is a “Sub-Saharan African specificity” in “nation building” and prevention of conflicts. Blanket fragility-oriented policies will be misplaced unless they are contingent on the degree of fragility, since “fragile” and “extreme fragile” countries respond differently to economic, institutional and demographic characteristics of state fragility.

The study is timely given the political strife, violence and conflicts issues currently affecting African development.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of state fragility on select indicators of human development and identify aspects of state fragility that have the greatest impact on poverty reduction and sustainable development. The paper also explores the impact of social cohesion on human development as well as the mediating role of state legitimacy in mediating the relationship between social cohesion and human development.

The study is based on data from 180 countries and uses ordinary least squares regression and mediation analysis to explore the effects of social cohesion on human development.

The findings show a significant relationship between state fragility and human development. It suggests that policies and efforts aimed at enhancing social cohesion would have the most significant impact on human development. The findings also show that social cohesion not only has a direct effect on human development but it also has an indirect effect on human development through state legitimacy (mediator).

Even though state fragility has been largely associated with low income countries, different facets of fragility are manifested in various countries regardless of levels of economic development.

The study is timely in view of the evidence of increasing state fragility in many countries. Furthermore, this is the first scholarly work linking lack of social cohesion, state fragility and human development.

This paper aims to determine the most possible telecommunications regulatory system for the Palestinian Authority by investigating its institutional foundations. The paper highlights the problem of setting sophisticated institutions in fragile states that do not fully control their resources and investigates possible solution in terms of foreign investments.

The paper follows a qualitative research approach in two parts. The first part examines the institutional endowment framework set by Levy and Spiller and Levy and Spiller but considers critique of the framework. It also investigates institutional problems in fragile states in order to identify similar patters identified in Levy and Spiller framework. The second part focuses on the Palestinian Authority institutional foundations. Data are collected through interviews with key stakeholders of the Palestinian telecommunications sector.

The case of the Palestinian Authority shows a mix of political investment cycles and a genuine attempt of regulatory reforms. Endogenous fragility of the government magnified the effect of corruption and the maintenance of business‐politicians ties. Also, the Palestinian telecommunications sector suffers from exogenous fragility in terms of Israeli control of radio spectrum, international gateway, and importing of equipment. Inability of the Palestinian Authority to invoke GATS BTA conflict resolution mechanism and the crucial role foreign investors played to secure release of spectrum for the second mobile operator indicates the need for the Palestinian Authority to attempt attracting foreign investment. However, foreign investments require regulatory effectiveness that the Palestinian Authority lacks; thus eliminating endogenous fragility becomes a prerequisite to exogenous fragility.

This paper sheds light on problems regarding setting up an institution‐based regulatory system in unstable states. It contributes to the argument that “one size fit all” might not be the answer for some countries, especially fragile ones.

The purpose of this paper is to test the relationship between state fragility and transparency. A state is deemed fragile when it falters in its ability to manage conflict and in its capacity to deliver basic functions and implement public policy. Although minimizing fragility of the state is undoubtedly an integral component of economic development, there is a huge variation across countries in terms of where they stand with regard to fragility. Further, it also explores how educational attainment affects the relationship between state fragility and transparency.

Using several robust estimation methodologies and a relatively new database on transparency, the authors find that higher levels of transparency lower state fragility. They reply on fixed effect estimators, lagged one period and five periods and system GMM estimators as part of our identification strategy.

Using several robust estimation methodologies and a relatively new database on transparency, the authors find that a higher level of transparency lowers state fragility. Greater and free flow of information empowers the populace, restores trust in government, increases participation in the political arena and, thus, reduces state fragility. This paper additionally shows that higher educational attainment helps reap the benefits of transparency even more and, thus, catalyzes transparency to lower-state fragility more effectively.

Our research shows that greater transparency leads to lower state fragility. Additionally, if the populace of the country has higher educational attainment, the benefits of transparency in reducing state fragility is enhanced. Although enhancing transparency amid high state fragility may be a challenging task, it can be achieved by providing the populace with better media access via internet and cell phones.

The authors use a relatively new database of transparency to show that transparency acts as an important determinant of state fragility. A state is deemed fragile when it falters in its ability to manage conflict and in its capacity to deliver basic functions and implement public policy. Given this definition, it is needless to say that what can affect state fragility and how can such fragility be lowered is an important research agenda. This paper aims to fill this gap. Additionally, it shows the importance of education while exploring such a relationship.

This study aims to investigate whether, discounting the effect of the relative wealth of countries, it is possible to observe the relevance of policies for e-government development.

The deviations of countries' results from what could be expected, considering their relative wealth is calculated by using the residuals of a linear regression using the Gross Domestic Product per capita as the independent variable and the UN E-Government Development Index as the dependent variable. The countries that achieve better and worse results than expected are then identified and their cases are analyzed by resorting to secondary sources, namely, published research referring to their cases. Those research documents were identified by successively searching the Scopus database, the Google Scholar database and the Web of Science.

The existence of formal e-government strategies and plans and the capacity to implement them can make a difference, allowing countries to achieve better results than expected or, in their absence, to perform worse than expected.

The proposed methodology can be useful to e-government researchers, particularly as a basis for deeper and more detailed studies.

Countries should invest in well-developed and focused strategies and continuity of public policies and their capacity to deliver results. For that purpose, political commitment and high-level coordination are key factors. For low-income countries, long-lasting cooperation with external experienced partners is crucial. For high-income countries, innovative thinking is a key enabler.

This study uses an innovative method to look beyond the effect of the relative wealth of countries and investigate the relevance of public policies for e-government development.

This study aims to propose an approach towards reducing differences between national economies and living standards existing between the world’s wealthiest and least affluent nations.

A systemic review identifies the impeding purpose as proposed above: an entirely new initiative.

The efforts recommended are vital for preserving the human species and ensuring the integrity of our planet. For both the future of the human species and the planet itself, it is essential to reduce the divide between wealthy and poor. Now is the time to give force to the types of implementation necessary to meet these combined goals.

This essay avoids dissecting problems of current geopolitical and ideological character. Despite their sometimes contentious nature, they are often reduced by intelligent diplomacy.

The study proposes a holistic approach to bridging the North-South divide.

Animal spirits in modern economics has a specific meaning; it refers to the restless and inconsistent element in the economy as well as the peculiar relationship people have with ambiguity and uncertainty, which tends to lead to paralysis or incredible confidence and energy in decision‐making and risk taking. Animal spirits have also been used to explain peaceful periods and instability or interpret track records of success and periods of disarray or spectacular failure, high levels of trust and confidence or extreme pessimism and distrust. Willingness to undertake extreme effort or self‐sacrifice to get things done is another expression of animal spirits, which can again go in the opposite direction with people shirking responsibilities, and practicing generalized selfishness or individualism. Such behaviours can have visible effects on the performance of public agencies or civil service agencies, in the behaviour of leaders in the public or private sector, or in the economic performance of a country. Differences across agencies and countries over time can also be explained if one is able to distinguish the effect of animal spirits. Using a logistic model, this paper tests for the existence of “animal spirits” in the capacity development interventions spearheaded by the African Capacity Building Foundation (ACBF)‐funded institutions. The analysis and findings highlight, amongst others, the importance of non‐economic factors in shaping the capacity development sphere. Understanding this nature of animal spirits is critical to designing and implementing effective programs for capacity development in Africa. It is particularly important to focus on issues of leadership and leadership development, including the capacity for leaders to instil confidence and piece together stories that motivate people into a common vision of the future or to achieve common objectives.