Institutions can contribute to regulating interethnic conflict; however, in many cases they fail to bring about lasting peace. The paper argues that their negligence of intraethnic factors accounts for some of this failure. Ethnic groups are often treated as unitary actors even though most...

Studien über die institutionellen Determinanten innerstaatlicher Gewalt legen nahe, dass die Präsenz multipler politischer Parteien das Konfliktpotential innerhalb der Länder reduziert. Es wird behauptet, dass Parteien oppositionelle Gruppierungen in eine institutionalisierte politische Arena...

This paper studies the oil-violence link in the Niger Delta, systematically taking into consideration domestic and international contextual factors. The case study, which focuses on explaining the increase in violence since the second half of the 1990s, confirms the differentiated interplay of...

This paper explores the use of hydrocarbon revenues in post-conflict Algeria. While the bloody years of the 1990s now seem to be over, recurring terror attacks and the ongoing state of emergency leave room for doubt that a situation of stable peace has been achieved yet. It is therefore...

The Iranian revolution still appears to be a puzzle for theoretical approaches linking political instability and/or violent conflict to the resource wealth of a country. It therefore works well as a case study for the purposes of this paper: to show the necessity of a broader approach to the...

The debate on institutional engineering offers options to manage ethnic and other conflicts. This contribution systematically assesses the logic of these institutional designs and the empirical evidence on their functioning. Generally, institutions can work on ethnic conflict by either...

Bei einem Degradationsgrad der Trockengebiete der Erde von 10-20 % und 250 Millionen betroffenen Menschen ist Desertifikation zweifellos eines der größten gegenwärtigen Umweltprobleme. Mit ihr geht vor allem für die Landwirtschaft ein erheblicher Ertragsverlust einher. Hieraus zu...

It has become common to state that youth gangs and organized crime have seized Central America. For theories on contemporary Central American violence, Costa Rica, El Salvador and Nicaragua present important test cases, demonstrating the need to differentiate the diagnosis. First, national...

The Costa Rican talk of crime is fundamentally based on the assumption that crime rates have increased significantly in recent years and that there is today a vast and alarming amount of crime. On the basis of this assumption, fear of crime, the call for the "iron fist", and drastic law...

Crime, violence, and insecurity are perceived as society's biggest problems in contemporary Costa Rica. This degree of priority is especially remarkable because the country has always been considered the peaceful exception in the violent Central American region. In this paper I analyze four...