Development practitioners navigate their way through the volatile and frequently violent contexts of the fragile states where they work. Often, they contend with obstructive and unaccountable authoritarian regimes. There is a good prima facie case that autocracy leads to fragility, and that fragility in turn loops back to autocracy. But the more one probes, the more tenuous and multi‑stranded the relationships between them appear.Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) 2021