Why is it that well-intentioned actions can create persistent conflicts? While norms are widely regarded as a source for cooperation, this article proposes a novel theory in which the emergence of norms can be understood as a bargaining process in which normative conflicts explain the finally...

I study the effect of voters with a group-based social conscience. Voters care more about the well-being of those belonging to their own group than the rest of the population. Within a model of political tax determination, both fractionalization and group antagonism reduce the support for...

Politische Unruhen, Bürgerkriege und im Extrem Völkermord sind einige der Gründe für die enttäuschende Wirtschaftsentwicklung in vielen Entwicklungsländern in den letzten Jahrzehnten, vor allem in Afrika. Perioden andauernder Gewalt beeinflussen auch die Verteilung von Einkommen in den...

We examine land reform policies and their implications for violent conflict over land and resource use in the Brazilian Amazon. We identify the protagonists (land owners and squatters), derive their incentives to use violence, and show the role of legal inconsistencies as a basis for conflict....

"Development as a Battlefield" is an innovative exploration of the multidimensional meanings of - and interactions between - conflict and development. The two phenomena are all too often regarded as ostensibly antagonistic. This was exemplified again in the context of the Arab Spring that...

Im vorliegenden böll.brief wird zunächst der Aufstieg des autoritären Populismus im Kontext der (politikwissenschaftlichen) Cleavagetheorie beleuchtet. In einem zweiten Teil werden ökonomische, kulturelle und politische Ursachen dieser skizzierten Entwicklung diskutiert. Vor diesem...

We interpret the psychology literature on social identity and examine its implications in a population partially composed of such agents. We model a population of agents from two exogenous and well defined social groups. Agents are randomly matched to play a reduced form bargaining game. We show...

Norms play an important role in establishing social order. The current literature focuses on the emergence, maintenance and impact of norms with regard to coordination and cooperation. However, the issue of norm-related conflict deserves more attention. We develop a general theory of normative...

This article examines the role of business in the historical development of job security regulations in Germany from their creation in the inter-war period to the dawn of the crisis of the 'German Model' in the 1980s. It contrasts the varieties of capitalism approach, which sees business as...

It stands to reason that social unrest does not erupt out of the blue. Although there are a great many reasons why social dismay might descend into social disorder, only few yardsticks or indices can plausibly be used to gauge the potential for social unrest (PSU). If policy makers want to...