The paper defines fragile states and addresses the challenges for development and poverty reduction. The paper distinguishes between four broad types of environments:
the ‘Monterrey’ cases of strong capacity and reasonable political will,
the ‘weak but willing’ category where government capacity is an obstacle to implementing policy,
the ‘strong but unresponsive’ states where state capacity is directed to achieving development goals, and
the ‘weak-weak’ governments where both state capacity and political will are lacking.
