ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the rise of resilience as a concept in international development. It links the
resilience concept to changing ideas of capacity and argues that the entwined concepts of resi-
lience and capacity increasingly frame the ways Western donors address societal fragility in the
Global South. The study argues that ‘the turn to resilience’ indicates a new pragmatism and a
retreat from grand planning as a response to a crisis in the international community’s approach
to handling fragility. Increasingly, Western donors take on the role of facilitators: responsibility
for implementation and project success – in the name of local ownership and bottom-up
approaches – is put on to local partners and the recipient state. Triangularly organised South-South
cooperation on ‘coaching and mentoring for capacity’ is highlighted as a mode whereby donors
attempt to create resilience and, it is argued, this type of programming encapsulates in a para-
digmatic manner key features of, and challenges posed by, this agenda.
