Authors: Jan Popisil and Florian P. K\u00fchn<\/p>\n
\u2018Resilience\u2019 has quickly risen to prominence in international security and development circles. In recent years it has found its way into political discourse on state building and state fragility, triggering a vast but often conceptually indistinct examination of the subject. Given its meaning in policy publications and guidelines, \u2018resilience\u2019 tends to eschew a static conceptualisation of statehood, turning instead to a more dynamic, complex and process-oriented rendering of state\u2013society relations. This illustrates a conceptual shift from \u2018failed states\u2019 to \u2018fragile states and situations\u2019. It also transforms the concept of \u2018failed state\u2019 as a mere threat perception \u2013 with \u2018stability\u2019 as its logical other \u2013 into \u2018fragility\u2019 as a particular form of social and political risk. This paper analyses the concepts in 43 policy papers, focusing on the nexus of \u2018resilience\u2019 and \u2018fragility\u2019 in international state building, and assesses potential consequences. What does \u2018resilience\u2019 \u2013 as the opposite vision to \u2018fragility\u2019 \u2013 in fact mean? What is the practice derived from this chimerical state of states?<\/p>\n