Across the world today, a diverse range of states are undergoing complex and often violent processes of transition. From states emerging from civil wars in Africa, Eastern Europe, the Caribbean, Asia and the Pacific, to those that the Arab Spring swept through in 2011-2013, the international community has been faced with the difficult task of supporting these transitions through state building, peace building, and development. This subject explores the way the international community engages in these deeply contested processes of social and political change, the dominant approaches taken, and their effectiveness in supporting states to transition out of oppressive regimes or civil wars. It uses a series of in-depth case-studies to explore different aspects of transitions and the challenges they entail. It encourages students to consider states in transition in the context of local, national, regional and international politics and processes, and the interaction between them.

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