Staff / Inclusive Narratives Practice Group /

Seth D. Kaplan

Seth D. Kaplan is a leading expert on fragile states. He is Senior Adviser for the Institute for Integrated Transitions (IFIT), a Professorial Lecturer in the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at Johns Hopkins University, and consultant to multilateral organizations such as the World Bank, U.S. State Department, U.S. Agency for International Development, and OECD as well as developing country governments and NGOs. He will soon publish his latest book Fragile Neighborhoods, where he offers a bold new vision for addressing social decline in America, one zip code at a time.

Dr. Kaplan has authored Fixing Fragile States: A New Paradigm for Development (Praeger Security International, 2008); and Betrayed: Promoting Inclusive Development in Fragile States (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013) – and one book on human rights and culture, Human Rights in Thick and Thin Societies: Universality Without Uniformity (Cambridge University Press, 2018).
He is also author of the U.S. State Department’s Political Transitions Analysis Framework (2020) and co-author of the United Nations – World Bank flagship report Pathways for Peace: Inclusive Approaches to Preventing Violent Conflict and USAID’s Fragility Assessment Framework (2018). He was the lead author, coordinator, and managing editor of both an eight country comparative study for the United States Institute of Peace on social contract formation in fragile states and a 100-page flagship publication for IFIT articulating a new approach to regime transitions in post-conflict and post-authoritarian countries.

Areas of expertise: fragile states, fragile societies, fragile communities, neighbourhoods, social cohesion, conflict prevention, peacebuilding, political transitions, polarisation, social innovation, systems thinking, China.