Micro Evidence For Peacebuilding Theories And Policies

Relying on micro-evidence on the repercussions of civil conflicts, this edited book explores theories and policies of post-conflict peacebuilding. Reconsidering existing knowledge on the civil conflict and peacebuilding processes in particular, it empirically presents the relationships between conflict dynamics and citizens’ norms, values, and preferences in the post-conflict context. Once it occurs, civil conflict brings enormous suffering on the local society. As a consequence of wartime coercion and violence that tear it apart, citizens come to harbor fear, distrust, and hatred of others, especially of those who are in different sociopolitical groups. This can significantly alter the pre-conflict norms and values of the citizenry and make reconciliation difficult across groups in the aftermath of the conflict. To tackle these problems, post-conflict peacebuilding should be well designed so that it can widely cover and sufficiently deal with conflict-affected citizens. This approach urges us to pay serious attention to the individual-level impact of the conflict process and dynamics. The importance of micro-level analysis does not disregard that of normative and/or macro-level approaches to the development of peacebuilding policies. However, the micro-level approach is better able to capture wartime civil–military relations that largely vary between individuals. The book is aimed at linking academic knowledge with policy development in peacebuilding. To reflect existing policy frameworks in peacebuilding, the implications of micro-evidence-based studies for conflict-affected societies are discussed here. A bottom-up approach pursued throughout this book allows us to elaborate desirable policy schemes for peacebuilding that conform to local contexts.

This book presents a progressive effort in enhancing scientific research pertaining to sustainable development, with particular emphasis on the Western Balkans region. It represents a comprehensive and versatile guide to sustainable urban development, that bridges diverse disciplines, combining theory and practice, to provide a multifaceted view on the topic, making it an indispensable resource for varied audiences.

DFID is right to focus more resources on fragile states if global poverty reduction goals are to be met. However, this report highlights a number of concerns about DFID's capacity to meet this and other new policy directions set out in the 2009 White Paper (Cm. 7656, ISBN 9780101765626), based on analysis of the Department's performance in 2008-09 (the Department's annual report 2008-09 published as HC 867-I,II, ISBN 9780102962154). Climate change, another key White Paper focus area, threatens progress on poverty reduction and will hit the poorest people first and hardest. The outcome of the Copenhagen Conference in December 2009 was disappointing and real progress needs to be made before the next conference at the end of this year. The White Paper also indicates that DFID will channel more funding through multilateral organisations including the EU, the UN and the World Bank. This offers the prospect of more coordinated delivery of aid, but only if these bodies increase their effectiveness and their poverty focus. The report also argues for speedier reform of the governance of the international financial institutions. The recession has had a significant impact on developing countries. It is estimated that an additional 90 million people will be affected by poverty as a combined result of the global food, financial and fuel crises over the last few years. Donors, including the UK, have responded and have sought to identify specific needs in developing countries, though many donors are failing to meet the aid commitments they have already made.

A country's abundant natural resources may serve as a curse or a blessing, with the outcome often dependent on prevailing governance structures and experience managing these assets. Despite natural resource advantages, many African countries have failed to transform their enormous economic potential and wealth into tangible benefits such as sustainable socio-economic development, human security, or peace. Governance, Conflict, and Natural Resources in Africa reevaluates the role that foreign state-owned and private-sector actors play in resource-rich states – whether stable, post-conflict, or fragile – in sub-Saharan Africa. Through research and an analysis of in-depth interviews with local stakeholders in Ghana, Sierra Leone, and Ethiopia, Hany Besada explains how foreign state-owned and private-sector corporations have contributed to economic growth at both the national and local levels in different resource-rich countries. This book reveals the unique challenges and opportunities created by these investors, demonstrating that new policies in business practices and operations have the potential to generate sustainable development and positive economic transformation. Governance, Conflict, and Natural Resources in Africa puts forward a novel framework for understanding the role of private economic actors in extractive industries in Africa and sheds new light on foreign private-sector contributions to capacity building and economic development.

This study looks at the causal relationship by which conflict triggers food crises and food insecurity (e.g.by disrupting distribution networks), which in turn perpetuate violence. It proposes intervention mechanisms, including regular cash transfers, for improving food security and sustaining peace.

Looking beyond and beneath the macro level, this book examines the processes and outcomes of the interaction of economic reforms and socio-economic peacebuilding programmes with, and international interventions in, people’s lived realities in conflict-affected societies. The contributions argue that disregarding socio-economic aspects of peace and how they relate to the everyday leaves a vacuum in the understanding of the formation of post-conflict economies. To address this gap, the book outlines and deploys the concept of ‘post-conflict economy formation’. This is a multifaceted phenomenon, including both formal and informal processes that occur in the post-conflict period and contribute to the introduction, adjustment, or abolition of economic practices, institutions, and rules that inform the transformation of the socio-economic fabric of the society. The contributions engage with existing statebuilding and peacebuilding debates, while bringing in critical political economy perspectives. Specifically, they analyse processes of post-conflict economy formation and the navigation between livelihood needs; local translations of the liberal hegemonic order; and different, sparse manifestations of welfare states. The book concludes that a sustainable peace requires the formation of peace economies: economies that work towards reducing structural inequalities and grievances of the (pre-)conflict period, as well as addressing the livelihood concerns of citizens. This book was originally published as a special issue of Civil Wars.

This book is a rarity in that it opens a genuinely creative new vista for understanding global politics as distinguished from international politics, enhancing the vision for understanding global subjects such as multilateral treaties and the Covid-19 virus. Six hundred multilateral treaties deposited in the UN are conceptualized as a bundle of quasi-social contracts by sovereign states. A state’s participation in multilateral treaties is envisaged as digitized statecraft. Using a state’s physical actions and treaties’ attributes, 193 profiles of statecraft are analyzed with the implications for the future of global politics. This book demonstrates that multilateral treaties are both a vehicle and an agency in the globalization trend; thus, both state and international actors influence a state’s joining multilateral treaties. The book represents a marriage of international law and applied information science. It provides a framework for empirical modeling based on artificial intelligence and analyzes this framework in terms of international law and international relations. This book thus creates a new understanding of global politics.