We were asked by the Independent Evaluation Office to outline political science methods for assessing the chances of reform implementation in an ex-ante fashion. We agreed to illustrate how these tools 'work' by using Pakistan as a case study. The recent literature on IMF-sponsored reforms...

Assigning students to school classes is a regular task for school administrators. With current practices focusing on equal class sizes, a balanced sex ratio, and pre-existing ties between students, schools miss out on a fundamental sociological insight: that social cohesion tends to benefit when...

How can an escalation of tensions between the major ethno-religious groups be avoided in a democratizing Iraq? The first section explains why and under which conditions democratization may stir up, rather than palliate ethnic conflicts: when networks of civil society organizations have not yet...

The Petersberg conference held near Bonn at the beginning of December 2001 and the donor conference held in Tokyo in mid-January 2002 defined the broad outlines for peace-making and reconstruction in Afghanistan. Under the Bonn agreement, a loya jirga consisting of representatives from all the...

Auf der Petersberger Konferenz Anfang Dezember 2001 bei Bonn und der Geberkonferenz in Tokio Mitte Januar 2002 wurden die groben Linien für die Befriedung und den Wiederaufbau Afghanistans definiert. Gemäß des Bonner Abkommens soll eine loya jirga, die sich aus Repräsentanten aller Regionen...

We empirically examine the impact of oil wealth on property rights protection for a sample of 156 countries between 1960 and 2014. We find that higher levels of oil wealth result in weaker private property rights. This result is robust to different instrumental-variable approaches and...

We empirically examine the impact of oil wealth on property rights protection for a sample of 156 countries between 1960 and 2014. We find that higher levels of oil wealth result in weaker private property rights. This result is robust to different instrumental-variable approaches and...

Scholars of public health typically focus on societal equity for explaining public health outcomes. Indeed, the COVID-19 pandemic has led to a spate of studies showing a tight connection between inequitable access to healthcare, welfare services, and adverse outcomes from the pandemic. Others...

How has government healthcare spending prepared countries for tackling the COVID19 pandemic? Arguably, spending is the primary policy tool of governments in providing effective health. We argue that the effectiveness of spending in reducing COVID deaths is conditional on the existence of...

This study examines the relative merits of grievance-based explanations of civil conflict that stress ‘Malthusian crises’ and ‘creed-related,’ civilizational clashes against competing propositions of greed- and governance-related explanations. The results from maximum-likelihood analyses...