Existing research suggests that democratization can run counter to building peace in post-conflict contexts. This article analyses the effect of two competing strategies that external actors use to address the conflict of objective between democracy and peace: prioritization and gradualism. The...

Exposure to violent conflict increases prosocial behavior, which is a form of social capital or informal institutions. This article studies whether these changes to informal institutions map into change to formal institutions, and if this mapping is characterized by substitutability or...

Reconstruction from conflict is a complex and demanding task, and a major challenge for post-conflict countries as well as the international community. Countries and their donor partners face multiple priorities – rebuilding infrastructure, assisting war-damaged communities, and re-creating...

In the past decade, nearly 20 studies have found a strong, persistent pattern in surveys and behavioral experiments from over 40 countries: individual exposure to war violence tends to increase social cooperation at the local level, including community participation and prosocial behavior. Thus...

Does humanitarian aid delivered in the aftermath of civil conflict increase the risk of conflict resumption? And if so, under what conditions? In contrast to previous work that focuses on the terms of civil war resolution, we argue that humanitarian aid is most likely to play a de-stabilizing...

Most nations have experienced an internal armed conflict since 1960. The past decade has witnessed an explosion of research into the causes and consequences of civil wars, belatedly bringing the topic into the economics mainstream. This article critically reviews this interdisciplinary...