2012/03 Effective statebuilding? A review of evaluations of international statebuilding support in fragile contexts

Statebuilding has become a major concern of OECD donor countries in recent years, and several conceptual studies and guideline documents for support to statebuilding in fragile contexts have been produced over the last few years.

This evaluation study explores existing empirical evidence in evaluations and other studies, in order to assess their support for the propositions regarding statebuilding support underlying or emanating from guideline documents. The quality of the different studies and evaluations is assessed – against common evaluation standards and in terms of how well they address challenges distinctive for statebuilding support – so as to assess the validity of their findings. 40 studies were selected for in-depth analysis, either major (cross-country or multi-donor) evaluations or outstanding case studies. The country cases studied include Afghanistan, DR Congo, Haiti, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Sudan (including South Sudan) and Sri Lanka.

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