Disentangling the Determinants of Successful Demobilization and Reintegration

Since 1989, international efforts to end protracted conflicts in Africa, Latin America, and Asia have included sustained investments in the disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration (DDR) of combatants from the warring parties. Yet, while policy analysts have debated the organizational factors that contribute to a successful DDR program, little is known about the factors that account for successful DDR at the micro level. Using a new dataset of ex-combatants in Sierra Leone, this paper analyzes, for the first time, the individual level determinants of demobilization and reintegration. Conventional views about the importance of age and gender for understanding reintegration find little support in the data. Instead, we find that an individual’s prospect of gaining acceptance from family and neighbors depends largely on the abusiveness of the unit in which he or she fought. Finally, while internationally-funded programs designed to assist the demobilization and reintegration process may have had an effect at the macro-level, we find no evidence that those who participated in DDR programs had an easier time gaining acceptance from their families or communities as compared to those who did not participate.demobilization, reintegration, conflict, disarmament, Sierra Leone

Measuring the Economic Impact of Civil War

Civil wars impose substantial costs on the domestic economy. We empirically measure the economic impact of such internal wars. The paper contributes to the existing literature both theoretically and methodologically. First, it explores the economic channels through which civil war affects growth. Previous studies have shown the negative growth effects of civil wars. We go a step further by identifying the channels through which war strips a country of its growth potential. Our argument is that civil war negatively impacts private investment through the process of portfolio substitution. Methodologically, the paper improves on both the data and statistical models used in the existing literature. Our data set includes better measurements of the intensity and scope of civil war as well as new economic and political data for the 1990s. Moreover, using a multiple imputation technique, we minimize the estimation bias due to missing data. Finally, to improve the model, we apply fixed and random effects models to the panel data. The evidence gives strong support to our argument indicating that the driving force behind the negative effects of civil war on economic growth is a decrease in private investment.civil war, instability, economic growth, investment, fiscal balance

Development Assistance, Institution Building, and Social Cohesion after Civil War: Evidence from a Field Experiment in Liberia

Can brief, foreign-funded efforts to build local institutions have positive effects on local patterns of governance, cooperation, and well-being? Prior research suggests that such small-scale, externally driven interventions are unlikely to substantially alter patterns of social interaction in a community, and that the ability of a community to act collectively is the result of a slow and necessarily indigenous process. We address this question using a randomized field experiment to assess the effects of a community-driven reconstruction (CDR) project carried out by the International Rescue Committee (IRC) in northern Liberia. The project attempted to build democratic, community-level institutions for making and implementing decisions about local public goods. We find powerful evidence that the program was successful in increasing social cohesion, some evidence that it reinforced democratic political attitudes and increased confidence in local decision-making procedures, but only weak evidence that material well-being was positively affected. There is essentially no evidence of adverse effects.Liberia; reconstruction; post-conflict; institution building; democracy; development; peacebuilding

Where Do Riders Park Dockless, Shared Electric Scooters? Findings from San Jose, California

Dockless, shared, electric kick-scooters started popping up on U.S. city streets without warning in 2017. Reaction to the shared scooters came swiftly and strongly. On the one hand, the scooters have proven popular with riders, attracting investment capital and expanding service to additional cities. But others have been less enthusiastic, with a central complaint being how shared scooters are parked. This perspective explores the extent to which parked shared scooters pose a problem to others on streets, sidewalks, and public spaces, using empirical evidence documenting where scooters have been parked in downtown San Jose, California

Why does ethnic diversity undermine public goods provision? An experimental approach

A large and growing literature links high levels of ethnic diversity to low levels of public goods provision. Yet while the empirical connection between ethnic heterogeneity and the underprovision of public goods is widely accepted, there is little consensus on the specific mechanisms through which this relationship operates. To gain analytic leverage on the question of why ethnicity matters, we identify three families of mechanisms - what we term preference, technology, and strategy mechanisms. Our empirical strategy is to identify and run a series of experimental games that permit us to examine these mechanisms in isolation and then to compare the importance of ethnicity in each. Results from experimental games conducted with a random sample of 300 subjects in Kampala's slums reveal that successful collective action among homogenous ethnic communities in urban Uganda is attributable to the existence of norms and institutions that facilitate the sanctioning of non-contributors. We find no evidence for a commonality of tastes within ethnic groups, for greater degrees of altruism toward co-ethnics, or for an impact of shared ethnicity on the productivity of team

Wave operator bounds for 1-dimensional Schr\"odinger operators with singular potentials and applications

Boundedness of wave operators for Schr\"odinger operators in one space dimension for a class of singular potentials, admitting finitely many Dirac delta distributions, is proved. Applications are presented to, for example, dispersive estimates and commutator bounds.Comment: 16 pages, 0 figure

Twisting arms and sending messages: Terrorist tactics in civil war

We examine the strategic rationale for terrorist tactics in civil war. We identify conditions that favor terrorism as a tactic in armed civil conflicts as well as the specific targets as a function of rebel characteristics, goals, and government responses to political demands. Terrorist tactics can be helpful as an instrument to coerce the government in asymmetric conflicts, as rebels are typically weak relative to the government. But terrorism can also help communicate the goals and resolve of a group when there is widespread uncertainty. We consider the strategic importance and rationale for terrorism in terms of the frequency of attacks and specific targets, and analyze our propositions using new data linking actors from the Uppsala/PRIO Armed Conflict Data and the Global Terrorism Database. Consistent with our expectations, we find that terrorism is used more extensively in civil conflicts by weaker groups and when attacks can help the group convey its goals without undermining popular support. Groups with more inclusive audiences are more likely to focus on ‘hard’ or official targets, while groups with more sectarian audiences are more likely to attack ‘soft’ targets and civilians