Between Development and Security: The European Union, Governance and Fragile States

textabstractThis article focuses on the recent attention in the European Union for fragile states, as expressed, among others, in the European Security Strategy of 2003 and the European Consensus on Development of 2006. It is demonstrated that most understandings of the notion of state fragility concern limited state capacity, the inability of institutions to deal with social and political tensions or problems of state legitimacy. The European Union is no exception to this general trend of seeing state fragility in terms of governance defici