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Publications (32)
Report
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This study is part of a series of ten country-focused desk studies on aid and democracy prepared under the project The state and statebuilding in the Global South. They are prepared under the guidance of Rachel M. Gisselquist as background to a broader research effort on aid, governance, and...
Working Paper
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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 notably, research shows that UN peacekeepers...
Working Paper
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– The reconstruction of gender relations in post-conflict Liberia
This 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 rebel groups, emphasizing how women operate within...
Working Paper
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Armed 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 empirical evidence is often inconclusive. As a lack...
Working Paper
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– New evidence from list experiments in three conflict-affected populations
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 violence are fraught with severe data limitations...
Journal Article
This peer-reviewed research is available free of charge. UNU-WIDER believes that research is a global public good and supports Open Access.
Part of Journal Special Issue
Legal Empowerment and Group-Based Inequality
From the book:
Towards Gender Equity in Development
Working Paper
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We examine a public goods game in 83 communities in northern Liberia. Women contributed substantially more to a small-scale development project when playing with other women than in mixed-gender groups, where they contributed at about the same levels as men. We try to explain this composition effect...
– Improving Representation and Responsiveness in a Post-Conflict Setting
From the book:
Development Assistance for Peacebuilding
This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence. It is free to read at www.tandfebooks.com and offered as a free PDF download from Taylor & Francis Group and selected open access locations. Development assistance to fragile states and conflict-affected areas can...
Journal Article
This peer-reviewed research is available free of charge. UNU-WIDER believes that research is a global public good and supports Open Access.
Problem The lack of proper water and sanitation infrastructures and poor hygiene practices in health-care facilities reduces facilities’ preparedness and response to disease outbreaks and decreases the communities’ trust in the health services provided. Approach To improve water and sanitation...
Working Paper
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Methods: In 2010–2014, we used a situational analysis tool to collect data at district and regional hospitals in Bangladesh (n = 14), the Plurinational State of Bolivia (n = 18), Ethiopia (n = 19), Guatemala (n = 20), the Lao People’s Democratic Republic (n = 12), Liberia (n = 12) and Rwanda (n = 25...
Improving the position of women continues to be an important concern in development. As we strive to make better living standards possible for people of all walks of life, we need to identify and meaningfully address problems faced by individuals and groups. The unfortunate truth is that women...
Working Paper
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This article explores whether legal empowerment can address horizontal inequalities in post-conflict settings, and if so, how. It argues that legal empowerment has modest potential to reduce these inequalities but that there are risks of strengthening group identities, reducing social cohesion, and...
Journal Article
This peer-reviewed research is available free of charge. UNU-WIDER believes that research is a global public good and supports Open Access.
– Improving Representation and Responsiveness in a Post-Conflict Setting
Part of Journal Special Issue
Development Assistance for Peacebuilding
Development assistance to fragile states and conflict-affected areas can be a core component of peacebuilding, providing support for the restoration of government functions, delivery of basic services, the rule of law and economic revitalization. Despite a wealth of research, however, significant...
Journal Article
Part of Journal Special Issue
Aid and Institution-Building in Fragile States
Working Paper
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Why are some countries more successful at carrying out post-conflict reconstruction programmes than others? Why has Sierra Leone been more successful in the reform of its armed forces than Liberia has after the end of the Mano River Basin wars? This paper argues that the diverging outcomes are...
Blog
31 October 2013 Tony Addison October finds Angle in New York, for our event on ‘Fragility and Aid–What Works?’ at the Permanent Mission of Germany to the UN. Just before that we were in Copenhagen for the ReCom results meeting on ‘Challenges in Fragility and Governance’. At both meetings we met a...
Blog
30 October 2013 Roger Williamson The UNU-WIDER meeting held last week in New York on the topic of fragility and aid argued forcefully that you cannot ‘fix’ failed states as you would a broken window. Drawing on over 80 papers from the governance and fragility theme of the ReCom—Research and...
Working Paper
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– Starting from Scratch? Improving Representation and Responsiveness
After its 14-year civil war, Liberia worked with multiple donors and partners to restore security. This paper explores the Liberia National Police’s innovative efforts to create a more gender-sensitive police service and describes the international and domestic support it received in doing so. In...
Research Brief
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The natural resource sector in Liberia has failed to produce links to other important sectors of the economy, and in particular has failed to create jobs for the large majority of the population. Creating new and productive jobs is key to national reconciliation. The aid community needs to...
Blog
Tony Addison This month saw the visit of Kaushik Basu, the World Bank’s new Chief Economist and Senior Vice President for Development Economics, to talk about the global crisis and the impact on emerging economies at a UNU-WIDER seminar. You can see a video interview with Kaushik here. Kaushik is an...
Working Paper
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– Policy Recommendations for Liberia
The experience and lessons of the last two decades have shown that ignoring the key differences between the economics of peace and the economics of development has been a major reason why countries relapse into conflict. This paper briefly analyses such differences and their important implications...
Book Chapter
From the book:
The Role of Elites in Economic Development
Journal Article
Part of Journal Special Issue
Small Business, Entrepreneurship, and Violent Conflict in Developing Countries
Working Paper
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Particular sets of institutions, once they become established in a society, have a strong tendency to persist. In this paper I argue that understanding how elites form and reproduce is key to understanding the persistence of institutions over time. I illustrate this idea with a simple political...
Working Paper
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– The Case of Liberia
How do production firms adapt to civil war? The answer to this question will inform the potential for economic development during and after conflict. Many businesses survive violent conflict, and in some cases even thrive. Understanding these successes will help policymakers to support the 'coping...
Book Chapter
From the book:
Linking the Formal and Informal Economy
Working Paper
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This paper investigates how people created, adapted and used social capital and conflict resolution during more than a decade of violent conflict in Liberia, and the potential of such capital to contribute to post-conflict peacebuilding and self-governance.
Book Chapter
– The Competition for Patronage in Resource-Rich Economies
From the book:
War, Hunger, and Displacement
Working Paper
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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, irrespective of conventional public/private distinctions...
Displaying 32 of 32 results