Journal Article
Conflict and Peace Building: Interactions between Politics and Economics

Violent conflict is inflicting immense damage on the societies and economies of the developing world. This paper introduces the UNU-WIDER special issue of The Round Table on‘Conflict and Peace Building: Interactions between Politics and Economics’. The issue assesses experiences in Burundi, Sierra Leone, Sri Lanka and Uganda, as well as the potential for Africa's regional organizations to contribute to peace building and the role of constitution writing in conflict resolution across the world. The issue has five main messages, namely: 1) good economics is broadly good politics; 2) getting the economic and political dimensions of peace building to work together is harder than governments and donors think; 3) an over-simplistic view of how economies respond to ceasefires can undermine otherwise promising political settlements; 4) foreign aid is valuable but only if carefully used; and 5) the process of constitution writing and the ways in which regional organizations work matter greatly to the chances of sustaining peace.