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Publications (79)
Working Paper
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This paper leverages a novel panel dataset covering the histories of 306 chiefs and 256 episodes of village governance and taxation by armed groups in 106 villages in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo in order to analyse the relationship between the governance of armed groups and the power of...
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– Challenges and lessons from Ukraine
Collecting public opinion data is challenging in the shadow of war. And yet accurate public opinion is crucial. Political elites rely on it and often attempt to influence it. Therefore, it is incumbent on researchers to provide independent and reliable wartime polls. However, surveying in wartime...
Blog
Fragile and least developed countries have had their development assistance cut drastically, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. For instance, net official development assistance to sub-Saharan African countries has shrunk by 7.8% compared to 2021. And...
According to a recent OECD Report, borderlands experience a greater intensity of violence, especially violence targeted against the state. While there is an expanding literature on the causes of civil conflict, we do not yet fully know why state peripheries are more prone to violence. Our research...
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We examine whether frontier rule, which disallows frontier residents from a recourse to formal institutions of conflict management and disproportionately empowers tribal elites, provides a more fragile basis for maintaining social order in the face of shocks. Combining a historical border separating...
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We analyse how inward foreign direct investment (FDI) received amid ongoing violence shapes armed conflict. We argue that FDI affects patterns of violence by influencing the state’s counterinsurgency strategy. To prevent disinvestment, governments strive to capture territory linked to investment...
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Violent conflicts affect the lives and livelihoods of almost one quarter of the world’s population. But the effects of violent conflict are not uniform. This study assesses the differential effects of violent conflict on young people’s education, job prospects, and forms of civic engagement and...
New research for UNU-WIDER explores the differences between revolutionary mass mobilizations in democracies versus dictatorships. Evidence from Lebanon and Iraq supports the argument that revolutions in democracies follow different trajectories—and may be less likely to succeed in their objectives...
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We investigate the impact of childhood exposure to organized criminal violence on sociopolitical attitudes in Mexico, where an entire generation of youths has been raised amid the country’s most violent conflict over the past century. We fielded an in-person survey to nearly 3,000 urban youths...
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We investigate the impact of the political representation of minority groups on the incidence of ethnic conflict in India. We code data on Hindu-Muslim violence and Muslim political representation in India and leverage quasi-random variation in legislator religion generated by the results of close...
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Aid is still an important feature of the development landscape. Fragile states, in particular, have the greatest development needs but due to their poor governance they are the least likely countries to use aid effectively to meet their development challenges. In this paper, we explore which fragile...
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This paper sheds light on the complex recovery governance in Ukraine by providing a snapshot of the evolving national recovery actors’ networks and examining them within a multi-level governance framework, using interviews, social network analysis, and a sense-making workshop. It highlights the...
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– Experimental evidence from a video intervention in Rwanda
This paper investigates the causal impact of a randomized video intervention designed to study the determinants of parental time investments in early childhood among low-income parents. We designed and screened a video that provided information and conveyed persuasive messages about the importance...
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– Evidence from South Africa
How do states rebuild nations after a major conflict? Truth and Reconciliation Commissions (TRCs) have emerged as one of the most common interventions to achieve this objective. Despite their popularity, little is known about their efficacy to foster reconciliation and nation building. We fill this...
Russia’s military involvement in Ukraine began in March 2014 with the annexation of Crimea, but it wasn’t until February 2022 that Russia shocked the world with a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, starting Europe’s biggest war since WWII. Defeating expectations that Russian military forces would...
– The role of partnerships
When the theme for the first WIDER Development Conference of 2022—peace, security, and conflict—was chosen some years ago, no one could have predicted how close to home the topic would be. As we welcomed our conference guests to Helsinki on that day, everyone’s thoughts were with our Ukrainian...
Displaying 16 of 79 results