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17802. Budget support lessons from post-conflict support to Mozambique
- Author:
- Lars Buur
- Publication Date:
- 04-2011
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- Danish Institute for International Studies
- Abstract:
- Mirroring an international trend, the new Danish development strategy has support to fragile states as one of its five priority areas. In line with this commitment, and as a relative novelty, the development strategy emphasizes the need to take risks and operate in risky environments. This is clearly important, not only for fragile state engagement and post-conflict reconstruction efforts, but for aid delivery more generally. Nonetheless, this also potentially creates a double-bind situation when risk-taking clashes with the consequences of risk-taking, particularly when tax payers' hard-earned revenue is at stake and politicians become nervous about negative media coverage and bureaucrats fear for their careers. In such a situation, risk-taking is politically and bureaucratically fraught. Development aid in general, and aid to fragile states in particular, is indeed a risky business, circumscribed by processes of rent-seeking, corruption, primitive accumulation and political favouritism; besides the more mundane – but no less risky – policy, planning and implementation failures where “white elephants” can easily be nurtured. Fragile states come in many shapes and supporting them requires considerable flexibility, independence, responsiveness, and local and political knowledge in order to seize the moment of golden opportunity.
- Topic:
- Conflict Resolution, Democratization, Humanitarian Aid, and Foreign Aid
- Political Geography:
- Africa
17803. Climate Insecurities: Exploring the Strategic Implications for Asia-Pacific Armed Forces
- Author:
- Evan A. Laksmana
- Publication Date:
- 04-2011
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Centre for Non-Traditional Security Studies (NTS)
- Abstract:
- This paper seeks to explore and assess the implications of climate insecurities for the armed forces of the Asia-Pacific region, and in particular Southeast Asia. It identifies key issues and trends related to climate insecurities – in the areas of mass migration, diseases, natural disasters and the scarcity of water, food and other resources. It then details the implications for armed forces in the region with reference to the strategic, institutional and operational realms, and contends that climate change will become both a burden multiplier and a threat multiplier in the decades to come.
- Topic:
- Climate Change, Health, and Migration
- Political Geography:
- Southeast Asia and Asia-Pacific
17804. The World Bank and the Emerging World Order Adjusting to multipolarity at the second decimal point
- Author:
- Jakob Vestergaard
- Publication Date:
- 04-2011
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Danish Institute for International Studies
- Abstract:
- The voice reform process originated in the Monterrey Consensus, which was articulated at the United Nations International Conference on Financing for Development held in Monterrey on 22 March 2002. For several years after the Monterrey Consensus, progress in deliberations on voice reform in the governing bodies of the World Bank was modest. But the global economic crisis raised the urgency of reforming the Bretton Woods institutions in the eyes of most countries and the creation of a G20 Leaders Forum gave further impetus to the voice reform process.
- Topic:
- Economics, Globalization, International Cooperation, International Affairs, and World Bank
- Political Geography:
- United Nations
17805. Timor-Leste: Reconciliation and Return from Indonesia
- Publication Date:
- 04-2011
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- International Crisis Group
- Abstract:
- The unresolved status of thousands of former refugees who fled across the border following a 1999 vote for independence remains a challenge to Timor-Leste's long-term stability. Many were never well integrated into host communities and are being drawn back across the border in small but increasing numbers by relative economic and political stability in the new state. These returns should be encouraged by both countries as a good opportunity to promote reconciliation between the two communities divided by the border. Doing so will expose the costs of impunity for the violence that surrounded the 1999 referendum and highlight the failure to implement practical recommendations from its two truth commissions, the CAVR and the Commission on Truth and Friendship. Timor-Leste's leadership may yet decide that some form of amnesty is the best way forward, but the country cannot afford to further delay broad discussion on solutions.
- Topic:
- Political Economy
- Political Geography:
- South Asia and Indonesia
17806. Religiosity as a determinant of happiness
- Author:
- Erich Gundlach and Matthias Opfinger
- Publication Date:
- 04-2011
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- German Institute of Global and Area Studies
- Abstract:
- We find a U-shaped relation between happiness and religiosity in cross-country panel data after controlling for income levels. At a given level of income, the same level of happiness can be reached with high and low levels of religiosity, but not with intermediate levels. A rise in income causes an increase in happiness along with a decline of religiosity. Our interpretation of the empirical results is that the indifference curves for religiosity and other commodities of the utility function are hump-shaped.
- Topic:
- Economics, Religion, Sociology, and Culture
- Political Geography:
- Albania
17807. Indonesian Jihadism: Small Groups, Big Plans
- Publication Date:
- 04-2011
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- International Crisis Group
- Abstract:
- Violent extremism in Indonesia increasingly is taking the form of small groups acting independently of large jihadi organisations. This is in part a response to effective law enforcement that has resulted in widespread arrests and structural weakening of Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), Jama'ah Ansharut Tauhid (JAT) and other organisations accused of links to terrorism. But it is also the result of ideological shifts that favour “individual” over “organisational” jihad and low-cost, small-scale targeted killings over mass casualty attacks that inadvertently kill Muslims. The suicide bombing inside a police station mosque on 15 April 2011 and a spate of letter bombs delivered in Jakarta in mid-March are emblematic of the shift. The government needs urgently to develop prevention strategies to reduce the likelihood that more such groups will emerge.
- Topic:
- Political Violence, Islam, Terrorism, Armed Struggle, Insurgency, and Law Enforcement
- Political Geography:
- South Asia and Indonesia
17808. "Time Sticks": How Islam and Other Cultures Have Measured Time
- Author:
- Barbara Freyer Stowasser
- Publication Date:
- 04-2011
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Center for Contemporary Arab Studies
- Abstract:
- Time is essential to the very structure of Muslim communal life. Times of ritual and worship of Muslim obligation are regulated according to celestial events, both lunar and solar, meaning that they are always place-specific and are seasonally adjusted on a daily basis. The sun measures the day with its four daylight prayers and—by the length of its absence—also controls the fifth, the night prayer. The moon measures the months and so also the year with its seasons of ritual celebrations. The Islamic calendar is an essential but oft-forgotten institution that has held the Islamic world together over wide geographic distances and for well-nigh a millennium and a half. One of its greatest advantages may have been that it was so low maintenance. By adopting a strictly lunar calendaric system, the beginnings (and thereby the ends) of the twelve months of the year, and therefore the year as a whole, could be determined empirically, anywhere, by way of sighting of the new moon that signaled a new month's beginning.
- Topic:
- Islam, Political Theory, and Culture
- Political Geography:
- Middle East and Arabia
17809. Thailand: The Calm before Another Storm?
- Publication Date:
- 04-2011
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- International Crisis Group
- Abstract:
- Nearly a year after the crackdown on anti-establishment demonstrations, Thailand is preparing for a general election. Despite government efforts to suppress the Red Shirt movement, support remains strong and the deep political divide has not gone away. Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva's roadmap for reconciliation has led almost nowhere. Although there have been amateurish bomb attacks carried out by angry Red Shirts since the crackdown, fears of an underground battle have not materialised. On the other side, the Yellow Shirts have stepped up their nationalist campaigns against the Democrat Party-led government that their earlier rallies had helped bring to power. They are now claiming elections are useless in “dirty” politics and urging Thais to refuse to vote for any of the political parties. Even if the elections are free, fair and peaceful, it will still be a challenge for all sides to accept the results. If another coalition is pushed together under pressure from the royalist establishment, it will be a rallying cry for renewed mass protests by the Red Shirts that could plunge Thailand into more violent confrontation.
- Topic:
- Political Violence, Democratization, and Insurgency
- Political Geography:
- Asia
17810. Ex oleo bellare? The Impact of Oil on the Outbreak of Militarized Interstate Disputes
- Author:
- Tim Wegenast and Georg Strüver
- Publication Date:
- 04-2011
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- German Institute of Global and Area Studies
- Abstract:
- According to conventional wisdom, strategic natural resources like oil are harmful to international peace. Nonetheless, there is little empirical quantitative work on the link between resource abundance and interstate conflicts. Analyzing the impact of oil on militarized interstate disputes on a monadic level of analysis, this paper shows that oil in fact influences the conflict potential between countries. Results of logistic regressions suggest that a high absolute oil production is associated with an increased risk of dispute initiation. Per capita oil production, in contrast, does not seem to influence a country's propensity to start militarized conflicts. We also find that while very small oil-rich countries are more frequently the object of military actions, large oil producers seem to be generally spared from foreign attacks. We conclude that specific causal mechanisms such as an increased military capacity or the indulgence of the international community (rather than domestic political conditions inherent to the rentier state) might be particularly useful to explain our findings.
- Topic:
- Conflict Resolution, International Relations, Oil, War, and Natural Resources
- Political Geography:
- Russia and Georgia