MERC presents: William Hout

Wil Hout Associate Professor of World Development International Institute of Social Studies in The Hague Between Development and Security: The European Union, Governance and Fragile States This talk will focus on the recent attention in the European Union for fragile states, as expressed, among others, in the European Security Strategy of 2003 and the European Consensus on Development of 2006. It is demonstrated that most understandings of the notion of state fragility concern limited state capacity, the inability of institutions to deal with social and political tensions or problems of state legitimacy. The European Union is no exception to this general trend of seeing state fragility in terms of governance deficits. This talk will analyze the governance-oriented measures that have been adopted in the Country Strategy Papers (CSPs) agreed between the European Commission and five of the six pilot countries.