Critiques of liberal, top-down approaches to peacebuilding have motivated a discussion of alternative, locally-led, and community-based approaches to achieving and maintaining sustainable peace. This article uses a case study of women’s savings and credit cooperatives in post-violence Nepal to...

The study models the spread of Nepal’s civil war across geography and over time. The potential effects of poverty, geography, caste, and prewar election outcomes on the spread and intensity of war-violence is examined, using data from the 1996 to 2006 Nepalese-Maoist civil war. Results...

The explicit consideration of geography in the conflict theory literature is still relatively rare. In this article, two warlords are modeled as being located at opposing ends of a hypothetical line. The model includes variables denoting distance and difficulty of terrain. Each warlord allocates...

The article discusses, first, systems control theory, which tells us how a self-regulating system, for example of social and political peace, should work. Second, it considers the theory of imperfect markets, which tells us just why peace and security frequently fail to be obtained. Third, it...

The article compares civil strife in the public arena to labor strikes in the private arena. Both are predicated on incomplete information (both sides believing they can "win," when one – and possibly both – must "lose"). Reasons for conflict, especially in Africa, include the rent-based...

This article explores the origin and cost of conflict within the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California (MET), a cooperative of 26 member agencies delivering water to nearly 20 million people. Conflict within MET has existed for over 30 years, but increasing population and decreasing...

The proposition that democracies are more peaceful than autocracies has spawned a huge literature. Much of the relevant quantitative research has shown that democracies indeed rarely, if ever, fight each other, although they are not necessarily less bellicose than autocracies in general. This...

NGO's with an interest in peace and development in Africa documented the role of diamonds in conflict while soci scientists were researching and modeling the role of natural resources in long-standing violent conflicts. Journalists described what was happening on the ground. The United Nations...

That military expenditure and conflict have adverse consequences for development is unsurprising but important. The policy challenge is to reduce them. I have suggested that substantial components of military expenditure could be reduced without jeopardizing security interests. Military...

Can a country achieve its development goals or, at least, its economic growth goals when it faces forty years of war? Angola's case serves as a paradigmatic example to answer this question. From 1961 to 1974, Angolans opposed Portuguese colonial rule by violent, revolutionary struggle. But from...