Book Chapter
Regional Cooperation and PeacePart of Book The New Regionalism and the Future of Security and Development
Part of Book The New Regionalism and the Future of Security and Development
Previous UNU-WIDER research has shown that the risk of internal conflict is high in low-income societies rich in natural resources and characterised by ethnic fragmentation. Yet for each country in conflict there are many others with similar...
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...
The six papers in this Special Issue to provide insights into advances in conceptualizing and measuring vulnerability, in particularly household vulnerability to poverty and country and regional vulnerability to external shocks. All of the papers...
In recent years there is a growing concern within the international donor community regarding the plight of a special group of countries labeled as 'Fragile States'. These states, which according to current donor lists currently numbers more than 40...
Entrepreneurs are often adversely affected by violent conflict such as civil war. At the same time though entrepreneurs may contribute to or even benefit from violent conflict and other ‘destructive’ and ‘unproductive’ activities that limit economic...
Fragile states have very mixed characteristics. Some are experiencing violent conflict, some are ‘post-conflict’, some have avoided large-scale violence–so far. Many are resource poor, but some are resource rich. Many are landlocked, but certainly...
Part of Journal Special Issue Entrepreneurship and Conflict
This study surveys the small but growing field of entrepreneurship and conflict in developing countries, which is also the topic of this special issue of the Journal of Small business and Entrepreneurship. We review recent contributions on how mass...
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...
In June 1998, Guinea-Bissau was thrown into conflict by a military revolt. This led to 11 months of fighting, extensive loss of life, and the displacement of up to a third of the country's population. This paper discusses the political economy of the...
This paper defines a role for human rights and human rights workers in the discussion of humanitarian emergencies. The approach is to look at how human rights law, monitoring, and information can be useful in two ways: (1) to warn of an impending...
This paper investigates the relationship between criminal activity and geographical isolation. Using data from Madagascar, we show that, after we control for population composition and risk factors, crime increases with distance from urban centers...
This paper uses econometric methods and case-study evidence to examine the political economy of complex humanitarian emergencies, multidimensional crises characterized by warfare, disease, hunger, and displacement. We find that stagnation and decline...
This paper uses econometric methods and case-study evidence to examine the political economy of complex humanitarian emergencies, multidimensional crises characterized by warfare, state violence, disease, hunger, and displacement. We emphasize that...
While much of the literature studies causes and consequences of war, the reverberations of peace have rarely been studied. By focusing on the universe of ceasefire agreements since 1993, we study the causal effect of peace on economic recovery using...
Since the end of the civil war, the Government of Sierra Leone has made substantial progress in strengthening public financial management. Improvements have been achieved across all aspects of the budget cycle and are particularly notable with regard...
The coherence and effectiveness of engagement with the world’s ‘fragile and conflict-affected states’—beyond ethical imperatives and geo-strategic considerations—turns on answers to two vexing questions. First, on what defensible basis is any given...
This special issue has its origins in work conducted under the Governance and Fragility theme of UNU-WIDER’s ReCom - Research and Communication on Foreign Aid programme (2011–13), and particularly the work on ‘Aid and Institution-building in Fragile...
Why are some countries more successful at carrying out post-conflict reconstruction programmes than others? Why has Sierra Leone been more successful in the reform of its armed forces than Liberia has after the end of the Mano River Basin wars? This...
The experience and lessons of the last two decades have shown that ignoring the key differences between the economics of peace and the economics of development has been a major reason why countries relapse into conflict. This paper briefly analyses...
Why do some states, with foreign assistance, transition from ‘fragile’ to ‘robust?’ Scholars in state-building have argued that neotrusteeship is an effective strategy by which external organizations might build post-conflict states. This working...
Since October 2000 Israel and the Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza Strip have become entangled in a bloody confrontation. This paper focuses on the economic relationship between the Israeli economy and the Palestinian economy of the West Bank...
This paper models the instability of peace agreements, motivated by the empirical regularity with which peace agreements tend to break down following civil war. When war provides opportunities for profit to one side, or when other difficulties such...
Since the mid-1980s there have been substantial cuts in military spending everywhere except Pacific Asia. The reasons are both political, such as the end of the Cold War, democratization in Africa and Latin America, and economic, with structural...
Reconstruction from conflict is a complex and demanding task, and a major challenge for post-conflict countries as well as the international community. Countries and their donor partners face multiple priorities – rebuilding infrastructure, assisting...
In this lecture Frances Stewart expands on some of the central themes of her studies for WIDER. She documents the ways in which political power, social demarcations and economic differences combine to produce horizontal inequalities between...
Establishing peace and reconstructing Africa's war-damaged economies are urgent challenges. For Africa to recover, communities must reconstruct, private sectors must revitalize, and states must transform themselves. Thus, unless communities rebuild...