Policy Brief
Social and Economic Policies to Prevent Complex Humanitarian Emergencies Lessons from Experience
In simple language and with numerous concrete examples, this policy brief analyses the impact - among others - of key ex-ante factors such as acute 'horizontal inequality' between social groups in the distribution of assets, state jobs, social...
Journal Special Issue
Explaining Violent Conflict
Recent years have seen a surge of research into the causes of conflict together with its development effects, as well as the design of peace initiatives, peace-keeping and programmes of reconstruction, reconciliation and democratization in ‘post...
Journal Special Issue
Conflict and Peace-building
Reconstruction from conflict is a complex and demanding task, and a major challenge for the UN system as well as the wider donor community. National authorities and their donor partners are faced with multiple priorities - rebuilding infrastructure...
Journal Article
Growth of African Economies
Recent evidence from an exhaustive political-economy study of growth of African economies—the Growth Project of the African Economic Research Consortium—suggests that ‘policy syndromes’ have substantially contributed to the generally poor growth in...
Policy Brief
Business and the Barrel of a Gun
Although the impacts of violent conflict on investment, production, incomes and inequality have been widely studied on an aggregate level, comparatively less is known about the more diverse impacts of such conflict at the micro (particularly firm)...
Working Paper
Conflict and Peace-building in Africa
Contemporary Africa reveals a range of causes, consequences and responses to conflicts which are increasingly interrelated as well as regional in character, as around the Great Lakes/Horn. Their economic and non-state features are undeniable, leading...
Journal Article
The economics of counterinsurgency
Present in India since the 1960s, the Naxalite insurgency has steadily spread across the country. Counterinsurgency measures lagged behind and did not follow any systematic process till the early 2000s with the exception of Andhra Pradesh, which in...
Working Paper
Développement, Aide, et Conflit
Le génocide rwandais est le résultat final d'une combinaison de mécanismes dont aucun ne peut revendiquer être prioritaire ou indépendant des autres. Parmi ces mécanismes figurent une extrême pauvreté et la réduction des perspectives d'avenir pour la...
Working Paper
The Economics Of Complex Humanitarian Emergencies
This paper, a draft from the early stages of an ongoing UNU/WIDER research project, outlines hypotheses for the economic cause of humanitarian disasters. Complex humanitarian emergencies are considered to be man-made crises, in which large numbers of...
Working Paper
Towards the Abyss?
Towards the Abyss? The Political Economy of Emergency in Haiti analyzes the various factors that have contributed to create a protracted humanitarian emergency situation in Haiti. The first section deals with the economic causes, the interplay...
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...
Working Paper
Social Capital, Survival Strategies, and their Potential for Post-Conflict Governance in Liberia
This paper investigates how people created, adapted and used social capital and conflict resolution during more than a decade of violent conflict in Liberia, and the potential of such capital to contribute to post-conflict peacebuilding and self...
Working Paper
Unofficial Trade When States Are Weak
This paper addresses informal cross-border trade in the Horn of Africa, with an emphasis on the Somalia borderlands. It will be shown that despite the collapse of a government in 1991, Somalia’s unofficial exports of cattle to Kenya have grown...
Working Paper
Agricultural Development for Peace
Agricultural development can contribute significantly to peace by raising incomes and employment, thereby reducing the social frustrations that give rise to violence. Agricultural growth also generates revenues for governments, allowing them to...
Working Paper
Group-Oriented Values, Rules and Cooperation
This paper uses a game-theoretic framework to explain how collectivist values hamper societies’ efforts to elicit cooperation in inter-group games of prisoners’ dilemma (PD) and draws on the results of the analysis to interpret the meanings of three...
Working Paper
Political Sources of Humanitarian Emergencies
This diagnostic study explores the political conditions that are associated with humanitarian emergencies. It employs a risk rather than cause-effect methodology. Humanitarian emergencies are not random events. They occur most frequently in states...
Working Paper
Foreign Direct Investment in Africa
Data from several investor surveys suggest that macroeconomic instability, investment restrictions, corruption and political instability have a negative impact on foreign direct investment (FDI) to Africa. However, the relationship between FDI and...
Working Paper
The Political Economy of Complex Humanitarian Emergencies
This paper develops and tests five hypotheses regarding the economic causes of complex humanitarian emergencies (CHEs). We argue that: (1) such emergencies, involving large-scale deaths and population displacements, are most likely to occur when...
Working Paper
Humanitarian Emergencies and Warlord Economies in Liberia and Sierra Leone
This paper explains correlations between humanitarian emergencies and political economies of 'failing states' in Liberia and Sierra Leone. In both, Cold War era rulers acquired personal power through their influence over economic exchange...
Working Paper
The Age of Humanitarian Emergencies
The Age of Humanitarian Emergencies makes an effort to define and operationalize a humanitarian emergency. After having discussed extensively definitions related to collective violence, especially genocide and civil war, the paper opts for a more...
Working Paper
Development, Aid and Conflict
Rwanda's genocide is the end-result of a combination of processes, none of which can easily be priorized or separated from the others. These processes are: extreme pauperization and reduction of life chances for a majority of the poor, especially...
Working Paper
Rehabilitating Health Systems in Post-Conflict Situations
Although baseline data for post-conflict situations are frequently unavailable, there is a clear deterioration in the health conditions of populations during and following conflict. Excess mortality and morbidity, displaced populations, and...
Book Chapter
Who’s the Alien?
In May 2008, South Africa became the theatre of widespread violent attacks against undesirable ‘outsiders’. Over 60 were killed, hundreds wounded, and tens of thousands displaced. This analysis aims at identifying the characteristics of the victims...
Working Paper
Local Agency, Development Assistance and the Legacies of Rebellion in Burundi and Rwanda
Rwanda and Burundi have both emerged from civil wars over the past 20 years and foreign donors have provided significant contributions to post-conflict reconstruction and development in the two countries. Yet although Rwanda and Burundi share several...
Working Paper
Education from the Bottom Up
The failure of the Somali state from 1993 to 2012 represents one of the world’s most profound and prolonged cases of state collapse. Initially, education and other government services came to a standstill. With the halt of fighting in some areas...
Working Paper
Foreign Aid in Dangerous Places
Mali long seemed a model, low-income democracy. Yet, in a few short weeks in early 2012, more than half of the territory came under the military control of an Islamist secessionist movement, and a military coup deposed the democratically-elected...