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...
Malokele Nanivazo Sexual violence crime (SV) in wartime is not a new phenomenon. Mass rapes have occurred in armed conflicts in Rwanda, Kosovo...
A common finding in the empirical civil war literature is that population size and per capita income are highly significant predictors of civil war incidence and onset. This paper shows that the common finding of population size and per capita income...
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...
We show that the Russia–Ukraine-war-induced changes in the international price of wheat affected political violence in Asia. Using data from 13 countries and more than four million cell-level observations, we show that a higher wheat price increases...
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...
Este resumo na área das políticas apresenta os resultados de um projecto do UNU/WIDER sobre a guerra e a reconstrução em África da autoria de Tony Addison, que se encontra actualmente publicado sob o nome de From Conflict to Recovery in Africa. Tal...
This policy brief summarizes the results of a UNU/WIDER project on war and reconstruction in Africa directed by Tony Addison, which is now published as From Conflict to Recovery in Africa. As this study makes clear, peace is often elusive and...
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...
Sameeksha Desai Across countries, entrepreneurship is shown to support wealth and income generation, job creation and innovations in product and...
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...
In Angola, the availability of two abundant resources (oil and diamonds) has prolonged the conflict beyond its Cold War context. The geography and political economy of these resources were crucial to the course taken by the conflict. Matching the...
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...
Support for entrepreneurship is widely seen as a mechanism to facilitate prosperity and peace in a growing number of post-conflict states. In this paper I critically evaluate this view. I argue that entrepreneurship is a ubiquitous quality in post...
The Maoist insurgency in Nepal is one of the highest intensity internal conflicts in recent times. Investigation into the causes of the conflict would suggest that grievance rather than greed is the main motivating force. The concept of horizontal or...
This paper provides causal evidence on early-life exposure to war on mental health status in adulthood. Using an instrumental variable strategy, the evidence indicates that early-life exposure to bombing during the American war in Vietnam has long...
This paper identifies historic patterns in the dialectic between nationalism and development across various East, South, and Southeast Asian nations. Nationalism as the rationale for development is used by regimes to achieve high levels of growth...
This paper provides causal evidence on early-life exposure to war on mental health status in adulthood. Using an instrumental variable strategy, the evidence indicates that early-life exposure to bombing during the American war in Vietnam has long...
Tony Addison With the ice floes now gone from the harbour outside the UNU-WIDER building, and with the snow replaced by an icy hail, there is a...
Tony Addison It’s now February, and Helsinki remains deep in snow. We had an extended blizzard last weekend, with temperatures hovering around minus...
We survey selected parts of the growing literature on the microeconomics of violent conflict, identifying where academic research has started to establish stylized facts and where methodological and knowledge gaps remain. We focus our review on the...
Poor governance and lack of state capabilities in around 45 countries pose a threat to global security and development. The involvement of the international community is required to help these states break out of their low-development–high-conflict...
This Research in Progress report is divided into two parts. Part I studies the operationalization and indicators of the different elements of complex humanitarian emergencies. It includes discussions of what to try to measure when looking into the...
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...
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...
Vietnam’s education system has recently attracted international attention for exceptional learning outcomes and success in improving schooling outcomes over a short period, despite being a lower-middle-income country. One potential explanation is the...
This paper shows that foreign aid in postwar Lebanon passed through two phases with distinct features that have had far reaching implications for postwar development. In the first phase lasting from 1992-97, foreign aid was mainly channeled towards...
It is important to make a careful distinction between illegal immigration, human smuggling, and human trafficking which are nested, but yet different concepts. This distinction is relevant because these different categories of the illegal movement of...
Globally, state failure is hugely costly. We estimate the total cost of failing states at around US$276 billion per year. In this paper we apply our global framework and methodology to analyse the cost of failing states in the Pacific Ocean. Globally...
Financial development is vulnerable to social conflict. Conflict reduces the demand for domestic currency as a medium of exchange and a store of value. Conflict also leads to poor quality governance, including weak regulation of the financial system...
by Tony Addison The period 1990-2000 saw 19 major armed-conflicts in Africa, ranging from civil wars to the 1998-2000 war between Eritrea and Ethiopia...
by E. Wayne Nafziger and Raimo Väyrynen Since the end of the cold war, civil wars and state violence have escalated, resulting in millions of deaths...
Conflict depletes all forms of human and social capital, as well as supporting institutions. The scale of the human damage can overwhelm public action, as there are many competing priorities and resources are often insufficient. What then should be...
This paper examines the impact of foreign aid on economic growth in Sierra Leone, a country where an empirical econometric study on aid effectiveness is yet to exist. Using a triangulation of approaches involving the ARDL bounds test approach and the...
This study explores the effects of foreign aid on democracy in Mozambique during the last decade. Aid for democracy built on historic relationships forged between donors and the government during the wartime humanitarian emergency. Foreign aid played...
by Stephen BrowneEvery ‘conflict country’ is a special case. What distinguishes Rwanda is the intensity of human destruction to which the country...
by Tony Addison War has destroyed the lives and hopes of millions of Africans. It poses major challenges to the United Nations system and to the wider...
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...
Since the mid-1980s there have been substantial cuts in military spending throughout the world, with the exception of Pacific Asia. The end of the Cold War, democratization in Africa and Latin America, structural adjustment programmes, debts and cuts...
Part of Journal Special Issue Civil War in Developing Countries
Part of Journal Special Issue Civil War in Developing Countries
Part of Journal Special Issue Conflict and Peace-building
The role of the state has occupied centre stage in the development of economics as an independent discipline and is one of the most contentious issues addressed by contemporary economists and political economists. The immediate post-war years saw a...
Part of Book Democratic Trajectories in Africa
Part of Journal Special Issue Civil War in Developing Countries
Part of Journal Special Issue Explaining Violent Conflict
The recognition of disputed territories as independent states rarely brings underlying conflicts to an end. Instead, fully, and partially, recognized...
Last week we woke up to a conflict that had echoes of the Second World War, the Cold War, and the last two decades of hybrid conflict all mixed into...
The Russian invasion of Ukraine has been fast shifting into a new phase, one many observers have noted is marked by increasing levels of Russian...
Russia’s war of aggression on Ukraine has catalysed the European Union (EU) — criticised as a paper tiger yet acknowledged to evolve through crises —...
Shock over the Russian invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022 continues to be felt. The heroic behaviour of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy...
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has rightly stirred outrage against an act of naked aggression, and sympathy for the plight of ordinary Ukrainians forced...
To date, there is limited understanding about the consequences of wartime dynamics for post-war state-building processes. This paper explores one such dynamics—the forms of governance exercised by armed groups during wartime—and proposes a...
Wartime sexual violence is widespread across conflict zones and thought to leave a disastrous legacy for survivors, communities, and nations. Yet, systematic studies on i) the prevalence and ii) the social and political consequences of wartime sexual...
While there is much to discuss about the geopolitics of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, let's not forget the men, women and children of Ukraine who...
The Ukrainian state, personified by its President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, has been heroic and has surprised many by its 'stiff resistance'. However...
Does repression of opposition elites prevent resistance against foreign-imposed regimes? On the one hand, elimination of elites can undermine the opposition’s capacity for anti-regime resistance. Yet killing opposition elites deprives the new regime...
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