Where states do not work for the poor
Nearly 60% of poor people outside of India and China live in states affected
by conflict or failing institutions. In many countries, public services do not
work, states struggle to manage social tensions, and governments fail to secure
broad and sustainable development for their citizens. The evidence increasingly
suggests that weak states represent both:
- the biggest challenge to achieving the Millennium Development Goals, and
- the greatest potential for increased global conflict and instability.
We urgently need research both on how we can best promote effective states,
and on how poor people's needs can be met by non-state structures. We seek
policies and strategies that work within the political reality of failing
states.
DFID will fund research which builds on the work of four ongoing Development
Research Centres: one on the state
itself, one on how citizens can develop the ability to participate, one on how
states respond to crises, and one on ethnicity, inequality and conflict.
Important issues that require further work include:
- how citizens can hold states accountable
- ways in which communities can come together to provide the goods
and services they need while ensuring environmental sustainability
- strategies
for managing crises and potential conflict
- understanding the international
factors that facilitate or trigger poor performance
- understanding how to
transform war economies
- understanding better the factors that promote or
undermine human security, and
- the dynamics of change - what trends are likely,
and how might they be influenced.
This is an Agenda that is changing fast and a research programme looking at
Power, Politics and the State started in July 2007. After the new research
strategy is complete, additional research may be commissioned
Last updated: 16 August 2007  Back to top
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