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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
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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...
Working Paper
The political legacies of wartime resistanceCan past wartime experiences other than violence have long-term effects on political attitudes and behaviours? How are these legacies sustained across generations and beyond those who directly experienced war?We explore these questions in Italy, a...
Working Paper
Frontier governmentalityWe examine whether frontier rule, which disallows frontier residents from 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...
Working Paper
Windows of peace: the effect of ceasefires on economic recoveryWhile 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...
Working Paper
The violent legacy of fascismWe still have limited knowledge about the long-term effects of fascism on European democracies. European countries experienced cycles of violence between the 1960s and 1980s. Can such violence be explained by legacies of mobilization during fascism...
Working Paper
Power, institutions, and state-building after warI examine whether and how the means through which a civil war ends affects the success of a country’s state-building strategy after conflict. I show that two distinct modes of conflict termination—military victories and negotiated settlements—lead to...
Working Paper
Revisiting community-driven reconstruction in fragile statesCommunity-driven reconstruction (CDR) is an approach to post-war reconstruction that gives discretion to local community councils in establishing priorities and overseeing the implementation of reconstruction and development activities. A series of...
Working Paper
War violence, nationalism, and party supportUnder what conditions can legacies of past violence shape political behaviour? We propose a theory of how war victimization defines attitudes over the long run, and how these can be activated by changes in the political environment. We argue that...
Working Paper
'It's our turn (not) to learn': the pitfalls of education reform during post-war institutional transformationIn 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 power relations...
Working Paper
‘Ten pound touts’: post-conflict trust and the legacy of counterinsurgency in Northern IrelandThis 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...
Working Paper
Armed groups’ modes of local engagement and post-conflict (in)stabilityWhat distinguishes post-war governments that succeed in establishing a stable political order and prevent recurring conflict from those that do not? This comparative study considers the specific threats that typically lead to the collapse of the post...
Working Paper
Legacies of victimizationHow does wartime victimization shape victims’ political attitudes in the long run? We argue that violence increases politics’ salience to victimized communities, which in turn increases these communities’ political awareness and evaluation of...
Working Paper
Why are Mexican politicians being assassinated?When does organized crime resort to assassinating politicians? In narcocracies, criminal groups co-opt political elites through bribery in exchange for protection to traffic illegal drugs. When criminal groups compete, they may also resort to...
Working Paper
The legacies of authoritarian repression on civil societyIn this paper we examine the legacies on civil society of routine repressive activities carried out by authoritarian regimes, such as the targeting of opposition organizations. We focus on participation in voluntary associations in post-authoritarian...
Working Paper
The unintended long-run impacts of agro-terrorism in BrazilThis paper studies the unintended long-run effects of a permanent agricultural shock led by agro-terrorism in Brazil on the education and labour market. We explore the witches' broom outbreak in cocoa farms in the world's second most important cocoa...
Working Paper
Don’t rock the boat? Fears of conflict and support for protest in Iraq and beyondWhy do people support—or refrain from supporting—nonviolent protests for political change? The literature offers different answers to this question, but one variable that has received little attention is fears of protest unleashing violent conflict...
Working Paper
The loser’s long curse: electoral consequences of a class conflictThis paper presents evidence of political legacies of exposure to a violent class conflict over 100 years. We revisit the Finnish Civil War of 1918 and first trace out the impact of local conflict exposure on electoral outcomes over a quarter-century...
Working Paper
The legacy of church–state conflictA burgeoning literature on repression against civilians argues that exposure to violence changes victims’ identities by strengthening attachment to the in-group and creates downstream effects for political and social behaviour that persist across...
Working Paper
States of disorderWhy 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
Trust the hand that protects you—Does UN peacekeeping harm post-conflict governments’ legitimacy?Rebuilding state legitimacy is a thorny challenge in the aftermath of civil wars. The international community has stepped in to support post-conflict states in rebuilding state capacity, sometimes replacing governments in providing public goods. Most...
Working Paper
Elite murder and popular resistanceDoes 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...
Working Paper
Hidden hostility: donor attention and political violencePolitical violence is a worldwide problem that has been on the rise over the past decade. The international dimension of domestic repression and dissent is a particularly relevant factor yet surprisingly understudied. In particular, governments that...
Working Paper
Civil wars and stumbling of patriarchal societiesThis research project traces how women’s participation in the Liberian civil wars, as combatants and peace agents, reconstructs gender relations in the post-civil war context. The current literature examines the role of women in the governance of...
Working Paper
Political representation in the wake of ethnic violence and post-conflict institutional reformThe lack of political representation often lies at the origin of identity-based violence, and, when not resolved, can re-ignite violence. We study who perceives gains and losses in political representation in Rwanda and Burundi and why. We rely on a...
Working Paper
Between victory and statehoodWhat accounts for armed violence in the aftermath of civil war? Efforts to develop a comprehensive framework to understand this phenomenon have been made in the literature. Yet existing studies have in general looked at distinct pre-war, wartime, and...
Working Paper
The incursion of Leviathan: wartime territorial control and post-conflict state capacity in PeruHow do civil war dynamics affect state-building decisions in the aftermath of conflict? This paper argues that, in the post-conflict period, the state focuses its efforts to build state capacity on areas in which state power has been eroded during...
Working Paper
Trust as state capacityThis paper explores the link between trust in government, policy-making, and compliance. It focuses on a specific channel whereby citizens who are convinced that a policy is worthwhile are more motivated to comply with it. This in turn reduces the...
Working Paper
Rebel governance during COVID-19As 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
Mothers at peace: post-conflict fertility and United Nations peacekeepingArmed conflict can shape reproductive behaviour as high child mortality and a lack of health services lead to higher fertility rates. Yet women often postpone childbearing in expectation of better times. Given the theoretical ambiguity, the extant...
Blog
What would be the economic consequences of a military stalemate in Ukraine?Russia’s war in Ukraine may reach a stalemate as neither side appears in reach of a military victory. Unless a settlement can be agreed, a frozen...
Journal Article
An exploration of the association between fuel subsidies and fuel riotsBetween 2005 and 2018, 41 countries had at least one riot directly associated with popular demand for fuel. We make use of a new international dataset on fuel riots to explore the effects of fuel prices and price regimes on fuel riots. In line with...
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Context
Main subject
Theme: 2019-23, Transforming states