In this blog the author says that  according to recent research by the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) most of the world’s poor will be living in fragile and conflict-affected states (FRACAS, pinching Duncan Green’s acronym) by 2015. It is, therefore, becoming even more urgent to figure out the puzzle of how to build budget transparency, accountability and participation in such states.

Another study by the World Bank (WB) and ODI (don’t they ever sleep?) presents lessons from public finance management (PFM) reforms in eight such FRACAS. The good news is that they find that some reform is indeed possible. Anecdotal evidence for International Budget Partnership’s own work in places like Cambodia, Mali and Chad, support this finding. The bad news of the WB and ODI research is that most of the successful reforms were technical in nature (such as the introduction of treasury single accounts or an improved chart of accounts).