Fragility Commission 2nd Evidence Session: Building legitimate government

The LSE-Oxford Fragility Commission’s second evidence session took place at Oxford’s Blavatnik School of Government on 8 June 2017 and was focused on the topic of building legitimate government.

In fragile and conflict situations, government has little legitimacy with citizens. This both constrains what government can effectively do, and the ability to change the situation. In designing strategy, it is important that these constraints be recognised: tasks that require more legitimacy than government has will fail. Building legitimacy may be a slow process: there may have been too much reliance upon instant formal processes such as elections, relative to the gradual process of improving citizens’ living conditions.

Five witnesses delivered opening remarks and discussed this important topic with the Commissioners.

The key takeaways of the session can be found here.

For more information, please contact Elisabetta Pilati, [email protected].