Institutions for Fragile States

The Institutions for Fragile States Initiative launches its oral history program in 2007-8. An important obstacle to research on institutions in fragile states is our lack of basic facts and timelines. The people who make the critical choices and observe the challenges up close, the practitioners, are too busy to write down their ideas, and too often the lessons from operational experience slip away.

The oral histories and ethnographies serve several functions. From a practical perspective, they are useful for citizens and policy makers, who will have access to transcripts, audio files, and short video segments via the web. “We need this resource urgently…we needed it yesterday!” volunteered one United Nations officer. From an academic standpoint, the information from the interviews creates the basis for the program’s natural experiments, which must be rooted in a detailed understanding of the policy interventions tried.

Fragile States began sending oral history teams into the field in late October 2007. A preliminary workshop will take place on the Princeton campus. Priority themes for 2007-8 include selected aspects of civilian policing, elections management, mineral resource management, and civil service reform.

Oral histories and ethnographies are not easy to do well. The program interviews practitioners who are currently on the ground--from local communities as well as donor organizations. It takes additional steps to develop an accurate and balanced picture, however. Knowledge generation is political in today’s world. When funding for projects depends on good performance reviews, managers are often unwilling to reflect on current problems or to say what they think has worked and what has not. For this reason, the program also interviews people who have left the scene and now work in other capacities, either in country or abroad. Experts may feel more comfortable about speaking if invited to reflect on their experience after the fact, preferably with the knowledge that others will do so too and that their individual identities will not be revealed unless they desire to go on the record.

Edited, cleared transcripts from the interviews will become part of a web-accessible archive. Short video excerpts, developed to help some of partner organizations, will also be available on a larger website. Participating Ph.D. candidates and scholars from partner countries will be able to develop case studies based on the interviews collected.

• The Oral History Web Archive is currently under development. Please click here for a link to a SAMPLE PAGE (no working links on page) 
   
• Download a brochure about participating in our oral history program.

^{Solid Waste Processing, Marianhill Landfill, Marianhill, South Africa (D.Scher, 2008)}