Transparency is frequently invoked as a powerful recipe for countering a number of malfunctions in governance processes. In the context of the resource curse it has increasingly come to the fore as a key mechanism intended to counter corruption and promote developmentally oriented use of natural...

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...

Can local elections introduced in a post-conflict context help to foster societal peace, or do they create new potential for conflict? The value of post-conflict elections has been the matter of controversial academic debates. However, this literature largely neglects to take into account the...

This article provides new evidence on how the international community can effectively foster peace after civil war. It adopts a disaggregated, yet comprehensive view on international peacebuilding efforts, expanding the current literature’s narrow focus on peacekeeping or aggregated aid flows....

Social cohesion is key for sustainable development. While social cohesion has suffered in many societies from the consequences of the Covid- 19 pandemic, high levels of social cohesion have helped to overcome critical situations during the pandemic in other societies. As a consequence,...

The EU has made democracy support a stronger aspect in its relations with African countries since 2002. However, a broad range of political and economic dynamics within as well as outside of Europe challenge democracy and its supporters: the rise of non-democratic countries such as China,...

Societies that have experienced violent conflict face considerable challenges in building sustainable peace. One crucial question they need to address is how to deal with their violent past and atrocities that were committed - for example, whether perpetrators should be held accountable by...

Evidence exists that democracies are particularly stable, yet also that processes of democratisation are highly susceptible to conflict, especially if democratisation occurs in the aftermath of violent conflict. New research from the German Development Institute / Deutsches Institut für...