Post-Conflict Risks

Paul Collier, Anke Hoeffler () and Måns Söderbom
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Paul Collier: Centre for the Study of African Economies, Department of Economics, University of Oxford
Måns Söderbom: Department of Economics, School of Business, Economics and Law, University of Gothenburg

Journal of Peace Research, 2008, vol. 45, issue 4, 461-478

Abstract: Post-conflict societies face two distinctive challenges: economic recovery and reduction of the risk of a recurring conflict. Aid and policy reforms have been found to be effective in economic recovery. In this article, the authors concentrate on the other challenge — risk reduction. The post-conflict peace is typically fragile: nearly half of all civil wars are due to post-conflict relapses. The authors find that economic development substantially reduces risks, but it takes a long time. They also find evidence that UN peacekeeping expenditures significantly reduce the risk of renewed war. The effect is large: doubling expenditure reduces the risk from 40% to 31%. In contrast to these results, the authors cannot find any systematic influence of elections on the reduction of war risk. Therefore, post-conflict elections should be promoted as intrinsically desirable rather than as mechanisms for increasing the durability of the post-conflict peace. Based on these results, the authors suggest that peace appears to depend upon an external military presence sustaining a gradual economic recovery, with political design playing a somewhat subsidiary role. Since there is a relationship between the severity of post-conflict risks and the level of income at the end of the conflict, this provides a clear and uncontroversial principle for resource allocation: resources per capita should be approximately inversely proportional to the level of income in the post-conflict country.

Date: 2008
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (17)

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Related works:
Working Paper: Post-conflict risks (2006)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:joupea:v:45:y:2008:i:4:p:461-478

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