Journal Article
Opposition Parties and the Urban Poor in African Democracies
Africa’s urban poor increasingly represent a key constituency for electoral mobilization. Opposition parties, which are pivotal for democratic consolidation, have nevertheless exhibited disparate success at obtaining votes from this constituency. To...
Working Paper
The Economics of Happiness and Anger in North Africa
Economics has rediscovered happiness even though the discipline has always been about human wellbeing. A growing evidence suggests that happier people can be more productive and innovative, which leads to profitability and economic growth. Thus...
Working Paper
The Impact of Democracy on Economic Growth in Sub-Saharan Africa, 1982-2012
Does democracy promote economic growth? There is still an ongoing debate over the economic implications of democracy, and this question has gained critical importance particularly in the African context, where a wave of democratization in the early...
Book Chapter
Benin - a pulverized party system in transition
Benin has seen a rapid proliferation of political parties since the country’s democratic transition in 1990. Recent counts suggest that over a hundred political parties are registered in this nation of just over 9 million people. No single party...
Working Paper
Why Humanitarian Emergencies Occur
This paper provides a beginning toward explaining why humanitarian emergencies have been so substantial in the post-cold war era, a period expected to be less violent. The humanitarian emergencies of the contemporary period tend to be state-centred...
Journal Article
In the shadow of the city
Sub-Saharan Africa is the fastest urbanising region of the world. This demographic transformation has occurred in concert with two other trends in the region, nascent democratisation and stalled decentralisation. Using the case of Lusaka, Zambia...
Book Chapter
The Economics of Happiness and Anger in North Africa
From the book: Oxford Handbook of Africa and Economics, Vol. 1.
Book Chapter
The Impact of Democracy on Economic Growth in Sub-Saharan Africa, 1982-2012
From the book: Oxford Handbook of Africa and Economics, Vol. 1.
Working Paper
Intervention, Aid, and Institution-Building in Iraq and Afghanistan
Since 2001 international attention has focused on the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, and specifically on the question of whether external intervention can assist weak or fragile states in successfully making the transition to stable democracies...
Working Paper
Aid, Accountability, and Institution-Building in Ethiopia
Forty billion dollars of official development assistance during 1991-2012 reduced Ethiopian absolute poverty while underwriting more efficient but exclusionary public institutions. This aid-institutions paradox reflects a strong interest-alignment...
Working Paper
Consociational Settlements and Reconstruction
This paper examines Bosnia with some comparative insights from Northern Ireland. Both places were extremely fragile in the immediate aftermath of their brokered peace negotiations and consociational institutions, in Bosnia in 1995 and Northern...
Working Paper
The Impact of Adult Civic Education Programmes in Developing Democracies
Can democracy be taught? Are individuals more likely to embrace democratic values, to learn basic knowledge about political processes, and to engage the political process more effectively as a result of their exposure to donor-sponsored civic...