Working Paper
Do fences make good neighbours?
India has employed a variety of military, political, and economic measures to combat the long running insurgency in Kashmir with little evidence on what contributes to stability in the region. This paper uses a variety of tests to detect structural...
Working Paper
New industrial policy and the extractive industries
Industrial policy is back. Advocates for industrial policy argue that the important question is not whether such policies should be applied at all, but how to design and implement them. For the extractive industries this development poses a challenge...
Working Paper
The role of governance and international norms in managing natural resources
The governance of natural resource wealth is widely considered to constitute a key determinant in whether the extraction of natural resources proves to be a blessing or a curse. What is meant by governance can span a wide range of components, while...
Blog
What role for East African hydrocarbons in the global economy post-Paris COP21?
by
Evelyn Dietsche
October 2017
Over the past decade significant hydrocarbon discoveries have been made across East Africa. Unsurprisingly, the respective governments countries have...
Working Paper
Governance and the reversal of women’s rights
States’ governance of gender is not unidirectional. In addition to ‘stagnation’ and ‘progress’, there can be an active reversal of rights already granted to women. Using the case of abortion rights in El Salvador, this paper investigates the...
Working Paper
Inequality, good governance and endemic corruption
Can a society suffering contests between rich and poor achieve good governance in the face of endemic corruption? We examine a stylized poor state with weak institutions in which a ‘culture of evasion’ damages state authority. Many evade tax payments...
Working Paper
What determines administrative capacity in developing countries?
While it is recognized that effective state institutions are pivotal for economic development, it is not well understood what their origins are and what explains their cross-country differences. We focus on budget institutions in developing economies...
Working Paper
Rebel governance during COVID-19
As COVID-19 spread worldwide, armed groups in control of territory were called to address the health emergency. However, our knowledge in this regard is limited. Specifically, it remains poorly understood why different armed groups responded to the...
Working Paper
A fiscal approach to the social contract in sub-Saharan African countries
The COVID-19 pandemic showed that many developing countries could not respond effectively to crises due to their limited capacity to diversify their social protection responses. Social protection systems depend mainly on government tax revenue...
Working Paper
States of disorder
Why is the recent track record of state-building so poor? Over the past decade, international interventions in Afghanistan, Somalia, Central African Republic, Libya, Mali, South Sudan, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo have not resulted in...
Working Paper
‘Ten pound touts’: post-conflict trust and the legacy of counterinsurgency in Northern Ireland
This paper explores the legacies of wartime rebel governance and counterinsurgency tactics. Insurgents rely on civilian support for resources, information, and cover. To defeat insurgents, the state attempts to extract information from communities...