Fragile States Strategy Research — Activity Summary

The purpose of this activity was to help USAID develop a strategy for assisting fragile states. To facilitate this effort, PPC IDEAS supported an IRIS effort that established a group of outside experts as a core working group to collaborate with a senior group of USAID personnel. Core group members actively participated in meetings to shape the substance and process of the fragile states strategy.

Under the overall direction of Clifford Zinnes, Director of Research Coordination at the IRIS Center, three scholars served as team leaders of subgroups in the fragile states effort: Jack Goldstone of George Mason University, Jonathan Haughton of Suffolk University-Beacon Hill Institute for Public Policy and Karol Soltan of the University of Maryland.

They drew upon a pool of experts that included: Charles Cadwell, Tariq Karim, Patrick Meagher and Dennis Wood from IRIS; Daron Acemoglu of MIT; Robert Bates of Harvard University; Avner Greif of Stanford University; Wally Oates of the University of Maryland; and Barry Weingast of Stanford University.

Other experts who participated in planning meetings included Tom Schelling and John Steinbruner of the University of Maryland and Timur Kuran of the University of Southern California.

Expert biographies available for download [PDF: 41KB]