Improving local governance in fragile states - practical lessons from the field

Abstract

Over the past 15 years, major international donor agencies shifted their approach to local politics in fragile states. In order to build stable state-society relations in conflict-affected societies, they committed to studying popular expectations on states, which may differ greatly from international norms like competitive elections and service provision. This blog post examines donor interventions to improve service provision in refugee-crisis-affected communities in Lebanon and Jordan from 2011 to 2019. Donor states hoped that improving service provision capacity of municipalities would increase public trust, but encountered problems with block voting and patronage, leading them to question the value of service provision. Future posts discuss alternate strategies that some donors attempted.