CommGAP, in partnership with the World Bank’s Fragile and Conflict-Affected Countries Group, sponsored a brown bag lunch on March 25, 2008. Henriette von Kaltenborn-Stachau of CommGAP, discussed some of the findings in her forthcoming publication, The Missing Link: Citizen-State Relations – Expectations – Trust: How to manage key dynamics of post-conflict reconstruction process.

High expectations for a quick “peace-dividend”, a public not trusting its state, and state-citizen relations severed by years of exclusion are among the most challenging issues national governments, and the international community supporting them, encounter in planning and executing post-conflict recovery programs. These issues are too often neglected by policy-makers, and experience has shown the cost of this oversight. This study argues that these issues have direct bearing on long-term stability and governance, and as such, these issue need to be at the very heart of post-conflict work.

Some of the questions addressed in the discussion included:

• Introducing the public sphere as a framework to deal with the “connective tissue” of state-building – what do we need to consider?
• What can the donor community do to support the development of a national public sphere?
• What are the challenges encountered? Examples from Timor-Leste and Liberia.

Photo Credit: Arne Hoel