The 'Weak States' Gap (Washington Post)

March 7, 2008

The Washington Post published an op-ed by CGD research fellow Stewart Patrick and adviser to the Obama campaign, Susan Rice, about their recent research on weak states.

From the article:

"Formulating effective strategies to build capable, democratic states presents major conceptual and practical difficulties. Policymakers lack user-friendly empirical tools to measure differences among the world's dozens of weak states and to determine what makes individual states weak. Each suffers from a unique combination of pathologies, and without an understanding of the specific sources of weakness in each state it is all but impossible to target interventions appropriately."