# INTRODUCTION

Social cohesion in its broadest sense refers to the ability of communities and individuals to collaborate with one another and with government for the common good. Strong social cohesion makes communities more resilient to external shocks and better able to manage public goods, which in turn facilitate stability and growth. Conversely, gaps in social cohesion can substantially exacerbate development challenges by undermining the ability of communities to overcome conflicts in a non-violent, productive manner and to act collectively to identify and implement solutions to the issues they face.

Social cohesion takes on particular importance in situations of fragility, conflict, and violence (FCV), where limited state capacity often meets extensive urgent needs. In such situations, the ability of governments and development partners to work directly with communities in identification of needs and vulnerable populations as well as in the implementation and supervision of development programs offers an important potential asset. Ten years ago, the 2011 _World Development Report on Conflict, Security and Development_ included programs that support bottom-up state-society relations as the first in its top five policy recommendations for programming in insecure areas, and specifically highlighted the importance of social cohesion as part of national institutional capacity. Similarly, the 2018 UN-World Bank _Pathways for Peace_ study argued that “navigating change by fostering inclusiveness and thus social cohesion is the essence of prevention.” This theme was reiterated in the WBG’s FY20-25 FCV Strategy, which highlights the importance of fostering social cohesion as a core engagement principle in FCV contexts. Beyond FCV settings, social cohesion enables communities to respond to other shocks, such as responding to the COVID-19 pandemic or adapting to the impacts of climate change.

Furthermore, in a recent agenda-setting strategy paper,<sup>2</sup> the World Bank identified social cohesion as one of the key pillars of social sustainability, along with inclusion, resilience, and process legitimacy. The dynamics connecting these different pillars are complex, and efforts to promote one component of sustainability can create disruptions that, at least initially, undermine its other dimensions, as is the case when interventions in favor of greater inclusion erode cohesion. Nevertheless, with careful adaptation to local challenges, efforts to advance these four components can also be mutually reinforcing. The strategies outlined in this paper aim to strengthen social cohesion while also creating contexts that allow communities to become more inclusive and resilient, and in which negotiation the process between different stakeholders is seen to be legitimate. Achieving these mutually reinforcing gains can however be a slow process, and development actors enacting these approaches must recognize that short-term engagement is often insufficient.

Efforts to operationalize social cohesion in development projects have had to contend with multiple definitions of the term, a lack of clarity on diagnostic and measurement approaches, and contradictory evidence on the feasibility of influencing social cohesion through project level interventions. This framing paper aims to address some of these constraints by offering a definition of social cohesion grounded in the academic literature and aligned with the institutional and operational priorities of the World Bank, and by bringing together new evidence and literature in the field to offer pragmatic approaches for measuring and seeking to build social cohesion in the context of development interventions.

> 2 World Bank. 2023. _Social Sustainability in Development: Meeting the Challenges of the 21st Century_ . This strategy paper proposes that social sustainability means that “all people feel part of the development process and their descendants will benefit from it. Socially sustainable communities and societies are willing and able to work together to overcome challenges, deliver public goods, and allocate scarce resources in ways that are perceived as legitimate and fair by all so that all people may thrive over time.”

2