Democracy-Support Effectiveness in “Fragile States”: A Review

Abstract

Processes of political transformation and external assistance in fragile states have received increasing attention in the academic literature over the past decade. This literature, however, has not yet adopted a multi-dimensional categorization of fragility. This article discusses the evolution of the concept of fragility, and assesses the growing literature on processes of political transformation in fragile states, with a special focus on the quantitative literature and on the effectiveness of external democracy-support policies. Its novelty lies in its contribution to drawing links between these parallel bodies of literature. Furthermore, this article argues that, by incorporating a more complex definition of fragility, future research could reach more nuanced approaches on how fragility influences both processes of democratization and the effectiveness of democracy-support policies.