Over the past few years, Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) members, bilateral, and multilateral development agencies have seen ‘‘fragile states’’ as a, if not the, major challenge to sustainable development and security. After 2001, many development agencies viewed violent conflict largely as the result of the incapacity of state systems to control such violence. It was also noted that inadequate states were themselves an important structural source of such violence. Fragile states, therefore, came to be seen as a major contributing factor to an inability of developing countries to develop or to provide basic social services and protection to citizens. Such states were also seen as a major challenge to social cohesion and integration associated with the development of ‘‘bad neighborhoods’’ and a variety of other negative consequences for citizens, communities, and neighboring states. In terms of the development and peacebuilding agenda, therefore, fragile states were and are seen as major contributors to instability and underdevelopment. The assumption is that where such states exist, it will be impossible to make any meaningful progress toward peace or, more pressingly, the millennium development goals.