Edited By Robert D. Lamb and Johanna Mendelson Forman ■ The United States has provided support to political transitions worldwide for many years. But it was just 20 years ago that the U.S. government established an office specifically to respond when regimes or conflicts ended and to maintain momentum toward positive change. Today’s conflicts, however, are […]
Read more...Author: rdlamb
How Will We Learn? (CSIS keynote)
By Robert D. Lamb ■ In my final keynote address as CSIS’s conflict director (and my most popular talk to date), I reviewed decades of “lessons learned” in peace and conflict to reveal 15 themes the peacebuilding and stabilization field can’t seem to get right. “When will we learn?” is the wrong question. The more useful question is: “How will […]
Read more...Rethinking Legitimacy and Illegitimacy: A New Approach to Assessing Support and Opposition across Disciplines (CSIS report)
By Robert D. Lamb ■ This report introduces a new assessment framework for legitimacy and illegitimacy that governments, businesses, and other organizations can use to better understand the sources and dynamics of support or opposition for any entity, policy, or program. It includes an intellectual history of the concept of legitimacy, summarizes the literature, introduces […]
Read more...South Asia Regional Dynamics and Strategic Concerns: A Framework for U.S. Policy and Strategy in South Asia, 2014–2026 (CSIS report)
By Robert D. Lamb, Sadika Hameed, and Kathryn Mixon ■ Once the United States withdraws most or all of its forces from Afghanistan, what issues are likely to continue to be of concern to U.S. policymakers in South Asia? What regional dynamics are likely to affect their ability to achieve policy priorities there? While the United […]
Read more...All of My Afghanistan and Pakistan Research in One Place
Quoting from my program’s page at CSIS summarizing our four years of research on Afghanistan and Pakistan: Since 2010, the Program on Crisis, Conflict, and Cooperation (C3) has studied security, governance, and politics in Afghanistan and Pakistan to find potential paths to stability and prosperity. One line of research, focusing on service provision and governance, studied […]
Read more...New COIN Manual
The new, revised Counterinsurgency Field Manual has been published — and I’m pleased to see that it’s actually incorporated a lot of my work on governance and legitimacy (including a page-and-a-half quote from a report I wrote in 2012, and reference to my PhD thesis)! I think this is the first big-time citation of my […]
Read more...Beyond Lessons Learned: Reengaging the Public about Civilian Capabilities
By Robert D. Lamb ■ Originally published in Stability Operations 9, no. 1 (October 2013) ■ It is easy to find examples of successful stabilization and reconstruction projects: just ask any agency that has funded one and the companies or organizations that implemented it. Or ask those of us who have led independent evaluations of […]
Read more...Absorptive Capacity in the Security and Justice Sectors: Assessing Obstacles to Success in the Donor-Recipient Relationship (CSIS report)
By Robert D. Lamb, Kathryn Mixon, and Andrew Halterman ■ In development, stabilization, and peace building, donors increasingly recognize the importance of being sensitive to the local contexts of their efforts. Yet the use of “blueprints” remains widespread. Even when standard approaches are modified for particular aid partners, there often remains a poor fit between […]
Read more...Rethinking Absorptive Capacity: A New Framework, Applied to Afghanistan’s Police Training Program (CSIS report)
By Robert D. Lamb and Kathryn Mixon ■ In development, stabilization, and peace building, donors increasingly recognize the importance of being sensitive to the local contexts of their efforts. Yet the use of “blueprints” remains widespread. Even when standard approaches are modified for particular aid partners, there often remains a poor fit between donor efforts […]
Read more...Private-Sector Development in Fragile, Conflict-Affected, and Violent Countries (CSIS report)
By Robert D. Lamb, Sadika Hameed, and Kathryn Mixon ■ Countries affected by fragility, conflict, and violence (FCV) pose significant challenges for development, including private-sector development. FCV countries are characterized by some combination of weak governance and ineffective national institutions; armed groups, high violence, and intense conflict; limited economic and social growth potential; extreme inequities […]
Read more...