The Elusive Peace Dividend of Development Policy: From War Traps to Macro Complementarities

This article reviews the literature on civil conflict and development with a focus on the socioeconomic consequences of violence and on promising policies for fostering peace. We make four main points. First, one of the reasons conflict is still often overlooked as key factor for development is that conflict costs are typically underestimated, in particular the shadow costs of deterrence. Second, there are several types of war traps that hold countries back, both economically and politically. Third, to break these traps, policies must be calibrated to address jointly both poverty and social tensions, as there is a strong macro complementarity between peace and development objectives. We document how single-minded policies that ignore this dual challenge can spectacularly fail, and we discuss in depth a series of particularly promising policies. Fourth, we highlight the increasing potential of novel data collection methodologies and the need for policy evaluation tools in violent contexts. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Economics, Volume 13 is August 2021. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.

Economic legacy effects of armed conflict: Insights from the civil war in Aceh, Indonesia

The province of Aceh in Indonesia provides a promising case for studying the economic legacy effects of conflict given subnational district-level data on violence and gross domestic product. We demonstrate specific negative economic legacy effects of armed conflict despite a general peace dividend: whilst all districts in Aceh grow faster after conflict ends in 2005 than during the conflict, the districts that suffered relatively more from violence during the war grow relatively more slowly during peacetime than districts that experienced relatively little violence. These negative legacy effects are relatively short-lived, however, and are no longer statistically significant from 2009 onwards. JEL classification: O40, O47, Q54

Japan’s Peacebuilding and Mid-Space Actors: A Bridge Between the West and the Rest

This chapter focuses on Japan’s approach to peacebuilding, and examines its ability to emerge as a hybrid peacebuilding facilitator. To test this potential, three cases of Japan’s engagement with mid-space actors are studied. By reviewing Japan’s flagship projects in Timor-Leste, Myanmar and Mindanao, the chapter shows that Japan holds the ability to establish trust-relationships with top/national leaders of the aid-recipient countries through its apolitical, request-based, non-intrusive and long-term commitment approaches that Japanese actors display. At the same time, Japanese actors operating at the local/bottom are able to develop relationships with mid-space actors through providing them with important know-how and resources. This practice has allowed Japan to engage with conflict-affected societies where and when access of other donors was denied, which gave Japan an advantage in supporting local bridge-building initiatives. In short, this chapter demonstrated how Japan could bridge between Western donors and aid-recipient countries in Southeast Asia. While several shortcomings of the Japanese approach such as the limited inclusion of stakeholders and unequal distribution of peace dividend are identified in this chapter, it concluded that Japan could emerge as a hybrid peacebuilding facilitator if these shortcomings were addressed.

The Human Capital Peace Dividend

While the literature has documented negative effects of conflict on educational outcomes, there is little evidence on the effect of conflict termination. We show how the permanent ceasefire declared by FARC’s insurgency during peace negotiations with the Colombian government caused a differential improvement on several educational outcomes in the areas affected by FARC violence prior to the ceasefire. This effect is not explained by peacebuilding and post-war recovery investments, and they are only partially driven by wartime child soldiering. Instead, we find support for other mechanisms such as the post-ceasefire plummeting of victimization and new economic opportunities in treated areas.

The right to the future and chrono-logics otherwise: Resisting governmentality’s temporal conduct

This paper attends to differing praxes of futurity circulating in Colombia, both in dominant and subaltern forms. It first considers temporality as an apparatus of governmentality, raison d’état, and settler colonial logics of violence deployed in the service of late liberalism, capitalist endeavor, and the so-called “peace dividend.” In contrast, it elaborates two distinct rights claims that counter official state claims on the future: the principle of the right to a distinct vision of the future in Colombia’s black Pacific social movement; and the legal claim of the right of future generations in a historic 2018 lawsuit brought against the government by several youth from diverse regions across the country. These claims pose what I name as a “chrono-logics” otherwise – temporal alterities that refuse the logics of settler colonial temporality and insist on an ecology of relations that pursue the survival and flourishing of diverse lifeworlds and futures. Este artículo se ocupa de diferentes praxis de futuridad que circulan en Colombia, tanto en formas dominantes como subalternas. En primer lugar, toma en consideración la temporalidad como un aparato de la gubernamentalidad, la razón de Estado, y las lógicas de violencia del colonialismo que se despliegan al servicio del liberalismo tardío, el empeño capitalista y el así denominado “dividendo de la paz”. Elaboramos dos reivindicaciones de derechos que contradicen las proclamas estatales oficiales sobre el futuro: el principio del derecho a una visión distinta del futuro en el movimiento social negro pacífico de Colombia; y la pretensión jurídica del derecho de las generaciones venideras en una demanda judicial histórica de 2018 que interpusieron jóvenes de diversas regiones del país contra el gobierno. Estas reivindicaciones plantean lo que denomino una “crono-logía” de otra manera – alteridades temporales que rechazan la lógica de la temporalidad colonialista y que insisten en una ecología de relaciones que persiguen la supervivencia y el florecimiento de diversos mundos y futuros.

The Human Capital Peace Dividend

While the literature has documented negative effects of conflict on educational outcomes, there is little evidence on the effect of conflict termination. We show how the permanent ceasefire declared by FARC’s insurgency during peace negotiations with the Colombian government caused a differential improvement on several educational outcomes in the areas affected by FARC violence prior to the ceasefire. This effect is not explained by peacebuilding and post-war recovery investments, and they are only partially driven by wartime child soldiering. Instead, we find support for other mechanisms such as the post- ceasefire plummeting of victimization and new economic opportunities in treated areas.

‘The System was Blinking Red’: The Peace Dividend and the Road to 9/11

This chapter is concerned with how the CIA tried to adjust to the new political and strategic realities of the 1990s. During the Clinton and Bush years, the very existence of the agency was challenged by many in congress and the commentariat. But there were no shortage of threats to manage. How did the CIA adapt to the different threat landscape where non-state actors, and terrorists were becoming increasingly dangerous. Primary among these was al Qaeda. The chapter examines how the CIA monitored this group. It focuses on the Bin Ladin Station, also known as ‘Alec station’, detailing its place within the CIA, and its methods of collection and analysis, and finally its outputs in the form of the President’s Daily Brief. The final part of the chapter focuses on how the Daily Brief is collated and presented. Document: Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in US.