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A country's democracy improves when it receives democracy aid from a larger number of donor countries. This finding appears surprising from a development perspective, as the presence of a large number of donors, and more generally 'fragmented aid', have been shown to impact negatively on the recipient country. But fragmented aid can be beneficial: Diversity on the donor side provides choice to the local actors involved in the process of democratization. It thus creates a 'marketplace of ideas' which increases the viability of the resulting institutions. In contrast, a highly-concentrated donor community can lead to the imposition of an institutional blueprint, designed in advance and not adapted to the needs of the recipient society. An instrumental variable analysis with panel data for 133 countries from 1994 to 2013, explicit tests of the causal mechanism, and anecdotal evidence from Ghana provide strong support for the benefits of diverse democracy aid.

Social cohesion is key for sustainable development. While social cohesion has suffered in many societies from the consequences of the Covid- 19 pandemic, high levels of social cohesion have helped to overcome critical situations during the pandemic in other societies. As a consequence, protecting and strengthening social cohesion has become an increasingly central goal for most countries and the international community. Despite the strong interest in the topic, the questions of how to define social cohesion and make it an observable phenomenon through proper measurement are still contested, in both academia and policy circles. To date, no consistent, temporally and geographically spread-out data on the different elements of social cohesion exists that would allow for a global analysis of social cohesion. This rather fragmented picture of analytical approaches calls for a more universal definition and measurement of social cohesion. [...]

Fragile states pose major development and security challenges. Considerable international resources are therefore devoted to state-building and institutional strengthening in fragile states, with generally mixed results. This volume explores how unpacking the concept of fragility and studying its dimensions and forms can help to build policy-relevant understandings of how states become more resilient and the role of aid therein. It highlights the particular challenges for donors in dealing with 'chronically' (as opposed to 'temporarily') fragile states and those with weak legitimacy, as well as how unpacking fragility can provide traction on how to take 'local context' into account. Three chapters present new analysis from innovative initiatives to study fragility and fragile state transitions in cross-national perspective. Four chapters offer new focused analysis of selected countries, drawing on comparative methods and spotlighting the role of aid versus historical, institutional and other factors. It has become a truism that one-size-fits-all policies do not work in development, whether in fragile or non-fragile states. This is should not be confused with a broader rejection of 'off-the-rack' policy models that can then be further adjusted in particular situations. Systematic thinking about varieties of fragility helps us to develop this range, drawing lessons – appropriately – from past experience. This book was originally published as a special issue of Third World Quarterly, and is available online as an Open Access monograph at https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9781351630337.