International Network for Economics and Conflict

To achieve economic growth and development, a just and honest government is a prerequisite. As this involves a complex set of corrective actions a partner-based approach can generate positive synergy between business, civil society and governments. The Global Compact Recommendations on Transparency address all these different actors.

This brief was prepared for the conference on "Assuring Food and Nutrition Security in Africa by 2020: Prioritizing Actions, Strengthening Actors, and Facilitating Partnerships," held in Kampala, Uganda,April 1-3, 2004.

The international community must shoulder its responsibility for crisis-prone states. This is nowhere more apparent than in countries scarred by the impact of armed conflicts. We must provide assistance wherever governments and other state institutions are non-existent or where they are too weak to ensure security and the rule of law, to get the economy up and running or to advance reconstruction

Rising international trade flows are a primary component of globalization. The liberalization of trade policy in many developing countries has helped foster the growth of these flows. Preceding and concurrent with this move to free trade, there has been a global movement toward democracy. We argue that these two trends are related: democratization of the political system reduces the ability of governments to use trade barriers as a strategy for building political support. Political leaders in labor rich countries may prefer lower trade barriers as democracy increases. Empirical evidence supports our claim about the developing countries from 1970-1999. Regime change toward democracy is associated with trade liberalization, controlling for many factors. Conventional explanations of economic reform, such as economic crises and external pressures, seem less salient. Democratization may have fostered globalization in this period.

This paper looks at the prospects and potential for countries emerging from conflict to attract significant amounts of private investment into their infrastructure sectors.

This paper outlines a methodology that seeks to determine whether and how development projects contribute to conflict resolution and whether the social skills learned through group-based decision-making— a key feature of community-driven development (CDD) approaches—are transferable to the successful management of local conflicts.

Given the wide range of policy concerns, diverse state experience, and multiple definitions that are currently in use, the purpose of this paper is to set out an approach to state fragility that has a high degree of analytical utility for the challenges of development and poverty reduction.

This article proposes a political economy of extraction framework that explains political order and state collapse as alternative outcomes in the face of lootable wealth. The article looks closely at the cases of Sierra Leone and Burma.

Today, practitioners are working in places where conflict is resurgent and political stability is tenuous at best. This Progress Note explores the key ingredients to the success of microfinance programs in conflict and post-conflict environments.

This paper re-examines the proposition that countries with a higher percentage of national income from primary commodity exports have been more prone to civil war.