Insurgency and Credible Commitment in Autocracies and Democracies

Insurgency and Credible Commitment in Autocracies and Democracies PDF Author: Philip Keefer
Publisher: World Bank Publications
ISBN:
Category : Armed Conflict
Languages : en
Pages : 29

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Book Description
This paper suggests a new factor that makes civil war more likely: the inability of political actors to make credible promises to broad segments of society. Lacking this ability, both elected and unelected governments pursue public policies that leave citizens less well-off and more prone to revolt. At the same time, these actors have a reduced ability to build an anti-insurgency capacity in the first place, since they are less able to prevent anti-insurgents from themselves mounting coups. But while reducing the risk of conflict overall, increasing credibility can, over some range, worsen the effects of natural resources and ethnic fragmentation on civil war. Empirical tests using various measures of political credibility support these conclusions.

Insurgency and Credible Commitment in Autocracies and Democracies

Insurgency and Credible Commitment in Autocracies and Democracies PDF Author: Philip Keefer
Publisher: World Bank Publications
ISBN:
Category : Armed Conflict
Languages : en
Pages : 29

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Book Description
This paper suggests a new factor that makes civil war more likely: the inability of political actors to make credible promises to broad segments of society. Lacking this ability, both elected and unelected governments pursue public policies that leave citizens less well-off and more prone to revolt. At the same time, these actors have a reduced ability to build an anti-insurgency capacity in the first place, since they are less able to prevent anti-insurgents from themselves mounting coups. But while reducing the risk of conflict overall, increasing credibility can, over some range, worsen the effects of natural resources and ethnic fragmentation on civil war. Empirical tests using various measures of political credibility support these conclusions.

Insurgency and Credible Commitment in Autocracies and Democracies

Insurgency and Credible Commitment in Autocracies and Democracies PDF Author: Philip Keefer
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
This paper suggests a new factor that makes civil war more likely: the inability of political actors to make credible promises to broad segments of society. Lacking this ability, both elected and unelected governments pursue public policies that leave citizens less well-off and more prone to revolt. At the same time, these actors have a reduced ability to build an anti-insurgency capacity in the first place, since they are less able to prevent anti-insurgents from themselves mounting coups. But while reducing the risk of conflict overall, increasing credibility can, over some range, worsen the effects of natural resources and ethnic fragmentation on civil war. Empirical tests using various measures of political credibility support these conclusions.

Constitutions in Authoritarian Regimes

Constitutions in Authoritarian Regimes PDF Author: Tom Ginsburg
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107047668
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 283

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Book Description
This volume explores the form and function of constitutions in countries without the fully articulated institutions of limited government.

Democracy and Nationalism in Southeast Asia

Democracy and Nationalism in Southeast Asia PDF Author: Jacques Bertrand
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108870236
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 301

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Book Description
Jacques Bertrand offers a comparative-historical analysis of five nationalist conflicts over several decades in Southeast Asia. Using a theoretical framework to explain variance over time and across cases, he challenges and refines existing debates on democracy's impact and shows that, while democratization significantly reduces violent insurgency over time, it often introduces pernicious effects that fail to resolve conflict and contribute to maintaining deep nationalist grievances. Drawing on years of detailed fieldwork, Bertrand analyses the paths that led from secessionist mobilization to a range of outcomes. These include persistent state repression for Malay Muslims in Thailand, low level violence under a top-down 'special autonomy' for Papuans, reframing of mobilizing from nationalist to indigenous peoples in the Cordillera, a long and broken path to an untested broad autonomy for the Moros and relatively successful broad autonomy for Acehnese.

The Oxford Handbook of the Politics of Development

The Oxford Handbook of the Politics of Development PDF Author: Carol Lancaster
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199981817
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 753

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Book Description
In many discussions of nations' development, we often focus on their economic and social development. Is it becoming wealthier? Is its society modernizing? Is it becoming more technologically sophisticated? Are social outcomes improving for the broad mass of the public? The process of development policy implementation, however, is always and inevitably political. Put simply, regime type matters when it comes to deciding on a course of development to follow. Further, political institutions matter. When a government's institutional capacity is low, the chances of success severely decline, regardless of the merits of the development plan. In The Oxford Handbook of the Politics of Development, two of America's leading political scientists on the issue, Carol Lancaster and Nicolas van de Walle, have assembled an international cast of leading scholars to craft a broad, state-of-the-art work on this vitally important topic. This volume is divided into five sections: major theories of the politics of development, organized historically (e.g. modernization theory, dependency theory, the Washington consensus of 'policies without politics,' etc.); key domestic factors and variables; key international factors and variables; political systems and structures; and geographical perspectives, inclusive of regional dynamics. A comprehensive and cross-regional examination on key issues of political development, this Handbook not only provides an authoritative synthesis of past scholarship, but also sets the agenda for future research in this discipline.

Why Peace Fails

Why Peace Fails PDF Author: Charles T. Call
Publisher: Georgetown University Press
ISBN: 9781589018952
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 328

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Book Description
Why does peace fail? More precisely, why do some countries that show every sign of having successfully emerged from civil war fall once again into armed conflict? What explains why peace "sticks" after some wars but not others? In this illuminating study, Charles T. Call examines the factors behind fifteen cases of civil war recurrence in Africa, Asia, the Caucasus, and Latin America. He argues that widely touted explanations of civil war—such as poverty, conflict over natural resources, and weak states—are far less important than political exclusion. Call’s study shows that inclusion of former opponents in postwar governance plays a decisive role in sustained peace. Why Peace Fails ultimately suggests that the international community should resist the temptation to prematurely withdraw resources and peacekeepers after a transition from war. Instead, international actors must remain fully engaged with postwar elected governments, ensuring that they make room for former enemies.

Strategies of Secession and Counter-Secession

Strategies of Secession and Counter-Secession PDF Author: Ryan D Griffiths
Publisher: ECPR Press
ISBN: 1785523341
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 300

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Book Description
How can we understand the strategic interaction between secessionist movements and sovereign states? A casual review of the many secessionist struggles around the world, both violent and peaceful, shows a variety of types. Some, like Catalonia, are pursuing their ends using combinations of electoral capture and civil demonstrations, just as the Spanish government is working to delegitimize these efforts and defeat them in the polls. Regions like Nagorno Karabakh (Artsakh) lack the same institutional connectivity with the larger state of Azerbaijan and are relegated to a de facto (but unrecognized) status where defense, deterrence, and diplomacy are critical. For its part, Azerbaijan invokes its territorial integrity and attempts to deny all forms of recognition to the breakaway region. Other regions from West Papua to Tibet are faced with the hard choice between civil resistance and the use of violence, and their states are keen to suppress their efforts and hide them from the world. What features are common across all of these examples, and how do they differ? This volume synthesizes a number of theories and theoretical approaches that purport to explain the strategies of secession and counter-secession. This is an important topic. Apart from the many legal and cartographical issues that attend secessionist activity, the potential for conflict is a very real concern. Estimates put the share of civil wars driven by secessionism at about 50%. Firstly, and according to Barbara Walter, secessionism is the chief source of violence in the world today. Secondly, secessionism is destabilizing because, at the least, it presents a direct challenge to existing political systems. Yet surprisingly, the strategic interaction between states and secessionists is an area in which we have incomplete understanding.

The Oxford Handbook of the Economics of Peace and Conflict

The Oxford Handbook of the Economics of Peace and Conflict PDF Author: Michelle R. Garfinkel
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199908346
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 889

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Book Description
Social scientists and policy makers have long been interested in the causes and consequences of peace and conflict. This Handbook brings together contributions from leading scholars who take an economic perspective to study the topic. It includes thirty-three chapters and is divided into five parts: Correlates of Peace and Conflict; Consequences and Costs of Conflict; On the Mechanics of Conflict; Conflict and Peace in Economic Context; and Pathways to Peace. Taken together, they demonstrate not only how the tools of economics can be fruitfully used to advance our understanding of conflict, but how explicitly incorporating conflict into economic analysis can add substantively to our understanding of observed economic phenomena. Some chapters are largely empirical, identifying correlates of war and peace and quantifying many of the costs of conflict. Others are more theoretical, exploring a variety of mechanisms that lead to war or are more conducive to peace.

Post-conflict Aid, Real Exchange Rate Adjustment, and Catch-up Growth

Post-conflict Aid, Real Exchange Rate Adjustment, and Catch-up Growth PDF Author: Ibrahim Elbadawi
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Economic assistance
Languages : en
Pages : 52

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Book Description
Post-conflict countries receive substantial aid flows after the start of peace. While post-conflict countries' capacity to absorb aid (that is, the quality of their policies and institutions) is built up only gradually after the onset of peace, the evidence suggests that aid tends to peak immediately after peace is attained and decline thereafter. Aid composition broadly reflects post-conflict priorities, with large parts of aid financing social expenditure and infrastructure investment. Aid has significant short-term effects on the real exchange rate (RER), as inferred from the behavior of RER in the world. While moderate RER overvaluation is observed in post-conflicts, it cannot be traced down to the aid flows. The empirical evidence on world growth reveals new findings about the pattern of catch-up growth during post-conflicts and the role of key growth determinants on post-conflict growth. Aid is an important determinant of growth, both generally and more strongly during post-conflict periods. Because RER misalignment reduces growth, RER overvaluation during post-conflicts reduces catch-up growth. Aid and RER overvaluation combined also lower growth. But the negative growth effect of RER overvaluation declines with financial development.

Housing, Health and Happiness

Housing, Health and Happiness PDF Author: Matias D. Cattaneo
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Child welfare
Languages : en
Pages : 106

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Book Description
Despite the importance of housing for people's well-being, there has been little work done to assess the causal impact of housing and housing improvement programs on health and welfare. In this paper the authors help fill this gap by investigating the impact of a large-scale effort by the Mexican government to replace dirt floors with cement floors on child health and adult happiness. They find that replacing dirt floors with cement floors significantly reduces parasitic infestations in young children, reduces diarrhea, reduces anemia, and improves cognitive development. Finally, they also find that this program leave adults substantially better off, as measured by satisfaction with their housing and quality of life and by their significantly lower rates of depression and perceived stress.