For years, I’ve been researching, writing, speaking, advising, and ranting about systemic problems in foreign-policy making, especially with regards to complex conflicts, stabilization and reconstruction, and international development. Today, Melissa Gregg and I submitted the full draft of our joint monograph, “The Dual-System Problem in Complex Conflicts,” arguing that policy systems today are fundamentally unadapted to the complex […]
Read more...Category: Effectiveness & Impact
Unlearned Lessons and the Dual-System Problem (SSI commentary)
By Robert D. Lamb ■ My most recent commentary focuses why policy systems so often fail to institutionalize lessons learned with respect to conflict, fragility, and development—and what the research community can do differently to help policy makers overcome barriers to effectiveness. > Read the full commentary here
Read more...Announcing the Foundation for Inclusion
For the past year or so, in my spare time, I have been quietly working on a new initiative with the intention of launching it soon after the election, whatever the outcome. Throughout my professional and volunteer career, I’ve worked in various ways on issues of exclusion – exclusion from political systems, from economic opportunity, […]
Read more...Preparing for Complex Conflicts (USIP brief)
By Robert D. Lamb and Melissa R. Gregg ■ The United States and its partners have not been unambiguously successful in most of the conflicts they have been engaged in since 9/11. In some cases, conflicts that had seemed settled erupted again under different guises. Combatants that had appeared defeated emerged under different names. Partners […]
Read more...Thoughts on “Ungoverned Areas and Threats from Safe Havens”
It feels strange that my name (to the degree anyone knows who I am) is still associated with the term “ungoverned” — I hate the term and use it only in scare quotes today, as should be clear to anyone who’s read the final report of the Ungoverned Areas Project (which I led as a Defense Department […]
Read more...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...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...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 […]
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