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Beyond Ukraine and Gaza: Five consequences of overlooking other conflictsThe years since 2020 have been one of the most violent periods since the end of the second world war. The war in Ukraine and the escalating violence...
This project seeks to increase understanding among policymakers, academics and practitioners of how institutional dynamics that develop during violent conflicts shape state-building and economic development trajectories in the long run, in order to provide policy guidance on achieving SDG 16.
While peace and stability are central to the prosperity and security of countries and their citizens, we currently have limited understanding of how and why violent conflicts persist, how and why their legacies endure across time, and what can be done to reduce the risk and impact of violence.This project will contribute to changes in conceptual understanding and policy discourse on how the different political dynamics and processes of institutional change that take place during (and due to) conflict shape state-building, economic development, and the persistence of the conflict and its legacies in the future.
To this purpose, the project will offer new comparative evidence on linkages between wartime institutions and post-conflict economic development, including the interaction between conflict dynamics, COVID-19 and associated policies to contain it. This evidence will be used to identify entry points and to influence the implementation of more effective interventions and policies by governments as well as international and grassroot organizations to build strong and inclusive state institutions, which will support the transition of countries from violence and instability to sustainable peace.
The project will include theory-building combined with the use of empirical data at the individual, household, community and national levels. It is organized around two thematic areas: (1) The effect of war dynamics on state-building trajectories in post-conflict countries, and (2) Linkages between wartime institutions and post-conflict economic development. In addition, the project has cross-cutting themes on the interactions between conflict dynamics, COVID-19 and associated policies to contain it, and on the rise of protests, demonstrations and riots across the globe.
The project will produce and/or commission 50--60 research papers from leading researchers in conflict analysis, peacebuilding and related fields by the end of 2022.
Key questions
- Why do some war-affected countries establish politically stable governments, while others continue to endure cycles of violence and conflict? What explains this variation in the political trajectories of war-torn countries?
- How and when does governance emerge in war zones and what forms does it take? What are its legacies for state-building and economic recovery of post-conflict countries?
- How does the institutional legacy of conflict affect patterns of economic growth and development in post-conflict countries?
- What role does the intergenerational transmission of violence play in the social and economic recovery of conflict-affected countries?
- How do different groups – defined across gender, age, ethnicity and religious beliefs – experience violence, their consequences and contribute to peace and state-building?
- What is the relationship between economic and health shocks and violent conflict, peacebuilding and economic recovery interventions in post-conflict settings – and when do shocks result in the renewal of violence and conflict?
- How can failures in governance be avoided during COVID-19 to ensure the sustainability of peace and security?
See a list of collaborating researchers and research paper topics here (to be updated on a rolling basis).
Watch this space
All papers, data, opinion pieces and opportunities to engage relating to this project will be available on this web page.
UN’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development
The research will address SDG 16: Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions
Follow the conversation at #LegaciesofConflict
TEAM
Focal point: Patricia Justino
Core researcher: Laura Saavedra-Lux
Project support: Iina Kuuttila
Communications: Eeva Nyyssönen
110 articles, publications, projects, experts...
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Journal Article
The long-term economic legacies of rebel rule in civil warA growing literature has documented widespread variation in the extent to which insurgents provide public goods, collect taxes, and regulate civilian conduct. This paper offers what is, to our knowledge, the first study of the long-term economic...
Journal Article
Can preferences for redistribution explain the impact of austerity on political participation? Evidence from the UKMany European countries introduced austerity policies to control rising debt in the wake of the Great Recession of the late 2000s. Recent research suggests that austerity fuelled political polarization, instability, and populism in Europe. However...
Working Paper
Faraway, so close: the impact of the Russia–Ukraine war on political violence in Asian countriesWe 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...
Journal Article
Are the effects of terrorism short-lived?Terrorism elicits strong public reactions immediately after the attack, with important implications for democratic institutions and individual well-being. Are these effects short-lived?We answer this question using a natural experiment design and...
Working Paper
Indirect rule: armed groups and customary chiefs in eastern DRCThis 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...
Journal Article
It’s our turn (not) to learnIn this study, we investigate the relationship between education reform, institutional legacies of inequality, and changing political institutions in a poor, conflict-affected country. Burundi experienced a dramatic change in ethnic and regional...
Journal Article
Introducing the Mapping Attitudes, Perceptions and Support (MAPS) dataset on the Colombian peace processThis article introduces the Mapping Attitudes, Perceptions and Support (MAPS) dataset, which provides rich survey data from more than 12,000 respondents in Colombia. Our panel survey – carried out in two separate waves in 2019 and 2021 – is...
Working Paper
Polling during warCollecting 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...
Blog
Development aid cuts will hit fragile countries hard, could fuel violent conflictFragile and least developed countries have had their development assistance cut drastically, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation...
Blog
Why are frontiers and borderlands more conflict prone—and what have institutions got to do with this?According to a recent OECD Report, borderlands experience a greater intensity of violence, especially violence targeted against the state. While there...
Journal Article
Acting like a stateThis article examines the complex local dynamics of armed violence in post-war Abkhazia. Drawing on in-depth interviews with the Abkhaz participants and non-participants in this violence and a range of secondary materials, it adapts the conceptual...
Research Brief
The prolonged effects of terrorismTerrorist violence has a profound influence on social attitudes, including trust in governmental institutions and attitudes towards migration and civil freedoms. Acts of terrorism cause citizens to experience a complex range of negative emotions...
Working Paper
Frontier rule and conflictWe 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...
Working Paper
Double-edged sword: understanding the localized effect of foreign direct investment inflow in conflict settingsWe 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...
Working Paper
Youth, violence, and sustaining peaceViolent 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...
Blog
Democracies are no longer immune to revolution – evidence from Lebanon and IraqNew research for UNU-WIDER explores the differences between revolutionary mass mobilizations in democracies versus dictatorships. Evidence from...
Working Paper
The legacy of Mexico’s Drug War on youth political attitudesWe 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...
Working Paper
Ethnic conflict: the role of ethnic representationWe 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...
Working Paper
Aid and fragile statesAid 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...
Working Paper
Making sense of multi-level and multi-actor governance of recovery in UkraineThis 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...
Working Paper
What drives parental investments in early childhood?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...
Working Paper
Nation building in post-conflict settingsHow 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...
Blog
After the war – thinking about reconstruction in Ukraine
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...
Blog
Working together on the puzzle of peace: 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...
Working Paper
Welfare losses, preferences for redistribution, and political participationThis paper studies the effect of austerity on forms of political participation—including voting, appealing for reform, and peaceful protesting—and the role of preferences for redistribution in shaping the relationship between individual exposure to...
Blog
Four global problems that will be aggravated by the UK’s recent cuts to international aidUK economic forecasts have improved markedly since the September 2022 mini-budget. The economic recession may now be more shallow and public borrowing...
Working Paper
Armed group opportunism in the face of recent crisesTerrorist and other types of armed groups often exploit natural and human-made disasters and emergencies to advance their causes. This paper studies how some armed groups have responded to two recent global emergencies—climate change and the COVID-19...
Working Paper
Theorizing revolution in democraciesScholarly logic holds that revolutionary movements are unlikely to break out in democracies, where citizens may simply remove unpopular leaders through elections. And yet the twenty-first century has witnessed a global series of uprisings against...
Working Paper
The education backlashEducation is a public service, assumed to be highly valued by citizens, allowing politicians to use it to reward their co-ethnics. However, nation-states have also used education to create loyal citizens, leaving politicians in times of heightened...
Displaying 32 of 110 results
Context
Main subject
Theme: 2019-23, Transforming states