The rise of intrastate conflict, political stress, and territorial, ethnic, religious, and linguistic cleavages in established and emerging federal countries has brought the relationship and dynamics at play between federal governance and state fragility to a place of increasing importance. State stability and conflict resolution and management in relation to various societal cleavages, are areas of particular relevance to both federalism and fragility. The intersection between fragility and federalism provokes questions concerning the differences between federations in non-fragile countries with limited existing cleavages, federations in non-fragile countries experiencing stress from cleavages, federations in fragile countries experiencing stress from cleavages, regimes considering federalism in extremely fragile countries experiencing stress from cleavages, and failed federations. Forum programming aims to address these issues comparatively with practical considerations.
