The Institute for State Effectiveness
ISE was founded as a result of work within international organizations on issues of state effectiveness, and experience confronting the challenges of state-building on the ground in Afghanistan between 2001 and 2004. In January 2005, recognizing the urgency of finding strategic, practical and operational solutions to the question of the role of the state and the market in a globalized world, the ISE team moved their attention from a specific country context- Afghanistan- to issues of state effectiveness more broadly, and mobilized a group of leading experts and practitioners on the subject to develop and pilot innovative solutions.
With the real challenges in Afghanistan and similar contexts at the forefront of their thinking, the team has developed a unique approach to the relationship between citizens, the state and the market which informs ISE’s advice to countries, international organizations and corporations. ISE has developed a range of tools which include a multi-functional framework that provides an integrated system for state and market-building. ISE has provided governance advice to stakeholders in southern Sudan, Lebanon and Nepal; policy recommendations to international organizations including the World Bank, the African Development Bank, the United Nations and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD); and strategic guidance to a number of global corporations.
Ashraf Ghani
ISE’s Chairman is the former finance minister of Afghanistan and Chancellor of Kabul University. A UN adviser to the process that led to the Bonn Agreement for Afghanistan (2001), Dr. Ghani, an Afghan citizen who became chief adviser to President Karzai during the Interim Administration and then Finance Minister for the duration of the Transitional Administration, is widely credited with the design of Afghanistan’s integrated political, economic and security strategy between 2001 and 2005, in the form of the Bonn Agreement, the National Development Framework, the ‘Securing Afghanistan’s Future’ exercise and the design of the Afghanistan Compact. He also developed an integrated system of implementation mechanisms in the form of National Programs and led a large number of significant government reforms. More...
Clare Lockhart
ISE’s co-founder and Chief Executive Officer is a specialist in law and public administration and trained at Oxford and Harvard. After working as an investment banker and barrister in London, she managed a program on state transition at the World Bank. She was then recruited as a UN advisor in Afghanistan during the Bonn process and advisor to the Government of Afghanistan during the Transitional Administration, designing and managing a series of national initiatives. While still in Afghanistan, she - with Dr. Ghani and a number of colleagues- began to codify this learning and advising high-level policy-makers in other transitional states.
David Thorpe
ISE’s Strategic Advisor is a strategic thinker and business process and technology expert, with deep experience in repositioning organizations to face contemporary challenges of globalization and the digital age. David has worked in a number of roles including as Global Director of Innovation for Ogilvy and Mather, as Global Lead of Strategy and Insights for Microsoft, and as Director of Corporate Creative Development for the New Yorker.
Andrea Woodhouse
An ISE Associate, has ten years’ experience in international development and establishing and managing global advocacy/policy institutions. She worked for several years on the design of national programs in Indonesia, and has since worked on global advocacy campaigns. She has degrees in Politics, Philosophy and Economics from Oxford University and Development Economics from the London School of Economics.
The team maintains a core staff. It also benefits from the advice and input of a network of advisors and collaborators drawn from a number of countries and disciplines, which inform and enrich ISE’s work.