Users’ Guide on Measuring Fragility

State fragility has become a buzzword in international development policy, leading to a dramatic explosion in the production of indices to rank countries according to levels of fragility. Despite this proliferation, no systematic analysis of such indices has yet been produced. The Users’ Guide on Measuring Fragility aims to meet this need by providing a rigorous, comprehensible and user-friendly examination of eleven country-level indices measuring facets of fragility.

 

Researchers and policy-makers are key target groups for the Users’ Guide. Whereas researchers may find the guide helpful when considering fragility indices to inform their studies, whereas policy-makers may discover a tool of relevance for cross-national assessments and impact analysis. Development practitioners may also find some of the debates and findings from the publication (e.g. on measurement types and data sources) useful in their professional practice.

 

The Users’ Guide on Measuring Fragility is a publication jointly produced by the German Development Institute and the UNDP Oslo Governance Centre (Democratic Governance Group, Bureau for Development Policy) with funds from the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development of Germany. It is a new addition to the UNDP Users’ Guide series published by the UNDP Oslo Governance Centre as part of its flagship programme on country-led governance assessments.

 

The Users’ Guide was informed by a desk review and systematic analysis of existing fragility indices, accompanied by interviews with producers of such indices. A readers group made up of some twenty experts, including the UNDP Bureau of Conflict Prevention and Recovery, provided comments to the document. The Users’ Guide was also peer reviewed to secure academic rigour.

 

The electronic version of this publication can be found at the UNDP Oslo Governance Centre or downloaded here.