China's economy remains less than half the size of the United States'. Yet Europeans believe that China is the world's leading economic power. Few other...
Seth Kaplan
Seth Kaplan is a Professorial Lecturer in the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at Johns Hopkins University. He teaches, writes, and consults on issues related to fragile states, governance, and development. He is the author of Fixing Fragile States: A New Paradigm for Development (Praeger Security International, 2008) and Betrayed: Politics, Power, and Prosperity (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013). A Wharton MBA and Palmer scholar, Seth has worked for several large multinationals and founded four companies. He speaks fluent Mandarin Chinese and Japanese.
What Does it Mean to Work Politically in Development?
Adrian Leftwich gives a great description of what it means to work politically in the development field in a recent publication Politics, Leadership, and...
What Switzerland Can Teach Us About Development
International efforts to help developing countries start with a mental model of how government should be structured. It is based on the most common European...
City Development States: Why Lagos Works Better than Nigeria
Nigeria is not known for strong governance. On the contrary, it is arguably one of worse governed countries in the world, losing hundreds of billions of...
How Ethnic Divisions and Politics Produce Conflict
What type of ethnic divisions and political circumstances are most likely to produce conflict? There is no easy answer, but there are formulas that can...
Why is this innovative capacity building program so small?
One of the largest problems in fragile states is how the government operates. There is a enormous shortage of capable managers and executives to staff key...
Inspiring Speech on African Entrepreneurship
Best argument for entrepreneurship (and rural development) in Africa you will ever see: [wpvideo KDpijSFG] Thanks to New York University's Development...
Why a Focus on Inequality in the MDGs (and in Fragile States) is Wrong
With the appointment of the United Kingdom’s prime minister, David Cameron, as one of the chairs of a forthcoming UN committee tasked with establishing a new...
Do World Bank Country Classifications Hurt the Poor?
As the competition for president of the World Bank approaches its final stages, it is worth considering what changes ought to be brought in by the new person....
Book on the Social Divisions that Plague Fragile States
A new book edited by Jeffrey Herbst, Terence McNamee, and Greg Mills discusses the most important problem in fragile states: weak social cohesion. It looks at...
Why more Islam not less is good for the Middle East (and democracy)
Religion has played an important part in the Arab Spring, either as a ideological influence behind calls for change or, more recently, as a major force in...
Libya: Tripoli (and others) Should Welcome Benghazi’s Demand for Autonomy
Last week, 3,000 militia and tribal leaders from eastern Libya announced unilateral plans to begin establishing their own autonomous government. They demanded...
Horizontal Versus Vertical Social Cohesion: Why the Differences Matter
Social cohesion is an underappreciated but crucial element in development, state building, and poverty reduction. It is an especially important factor in...
Is Corruption Always Bad?
Corruption is generally vilified as an unmitigated evil. It disenfranchises the poor, weakens public services, reduces investment, and holds back whole...
Somalia Conference Wrap Up
In the aftermath of the conference in London on Somalia, I offer a wrap-up of the best articles and books to read on the country. In the past week, there has...
Yemen: Is President Saleh Really Ceding Power?
“I have 33 years of experience in power and I know the difficulties, I know the negatives and positives. The one who clings to power is mad.” - Former...
The Last Ottomans: Does this mark the end of Aleppo’s famous souk?
Aleppo's famed souk is arguably the most vibrant and interesting in the whole Middle East. What differentiates it from other great markets in the region (such...
Going Silent: Where Languages Are Dying Fastest
If you speak a language no one else does, is it still considered a language? Courtesy: Wall Street Journal.
Brookings: How Not to Evaluate Aid Effectiveness
There have been growing demands for greater independent evaluation of foreign aid for at least half a decade now. As William Easterly argued as far back as...
Is Pakistan an emerging market?
Most people in the West believe that Pakistan is an unstable country on the verge of imminent collapse or an explosion of violence. It is consistently...
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The year 2020 will go down in history as the year when much changed. One thing seems to remain constant: the fact that the justice sector is slow to change. As a consequence, it seems to be missing a rather big boat. Good things often come out of bad things. It is no...
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