Frances Z. Brown

Frances Brown’s research stems from her interest in the increased recent focus on one longstanding “best practice” of Afghanistan development interventions - the World Bank-funded, community-driven development program National Solidarity Program (NSP) - whose initial promising results have prompted the international community to attempt more “NSP-like” projects. She examines the assumptions behind the adoption of such community-driven development programs for stabilization purposes: Have CDD programs successfully reached stabilization objectives elsewhere, and can they be effective within the allotted political timeframe for the Afghanistan effort? She also examines the execution of these programs: What organizational structures and programming decisions make such a CDD-based stabilization effort more likely to be successful? She looks at potential implementation obstacles as getting the consultative process right, selection of local counterparts, international community overload, shura super-saturation, and scale.

Brown is a Jennings Randolph Afghanistan Fellow at USIP through the 2011-2012 Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellowship. Her previous experience includes two years with USAID’s Office of Transition Initiatives, several years on the ground in Lebanon, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, and Afghanistan, and defense consulting. She has published commentaries in the Washington Post, International Herald Tribune, and Christian Science Monitor; she holds an M.A. from Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and a B.A. from Yale.