Fixing Failed States.

• Author: Amini, Khisraw
• Position: FURTHER READING - Brief article - Book review

FIXING FAILED STATES

Ashraf Ghani, Clare Lockhart

(New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 254 pages.

While many of the international practitioners who worked in Afghanistan in recent years have profited from their experiences by writing bestsellers, others, such as Ashraf Ghani and Clare Lockhart, are now engaged with more holistic questions of international development. Ghani's commitment has even extended to running for high office in Afghanistan--he was a presidential candidate in the 2009 elections. Ghani and Lockhart's work designing development projects with the UN, World Bank and Afghan government later formed the foundation for a grand state-building framework. Their book, Fixing Failed States, is a critical and programmatic account developed around the ups an downs of this process.

The idea of failed states is not new to the academic and policy communities. Prior discussion has highlighted the need to increase local governments' ability to deliver services rather than rely on aid agencies to do so. Ghani and Lockhart, however...