Examining the Intricate Relationship Between E-Government Readiness and State Fragility

Digital governance initiatives offer significant potential for enhancing public sector transparency, efficiency, and service delivery. However, fragile states frequently encounter profound barriers to adopting and sustaining e-government reforms. While static indices such as the E-Government Development Index (EGDI) and the Fragile States Index (FSI) offer useful benchmarks, they fail to capture the evolving nature of digital readiness and governance resilience. To address this gap, our study employs Self-Organizing Maps (SOM), an unsupervised machine learning technique, to cluster countries based on 15 EGDI and FSI indicators spanning 2008 to 2022. We identify three distinct developmental groups: Stabilized Nations, Emergent Nations, and Nascent Nations, and observe preliminary transition patterns indicating gradual convergence for some fragile countries. These early insights contribute to a dynamic understanding of the interplay between digital development and governance stability. Managerial implications emphasize sustained investments in digital infrastructure and human capital to enhance institutional resilience. Future work will extend this analysis to case-specific trajectory modeling and predictive transition analysis.