Violent conflict is common among the poorest countries and clearly one of the most important barriers to growth, destroying physical, human, and social capital, often in the long run. At the same time, it is a development `trap' that is not easy to escape from as poverty has also been found to...

Foreword -- Preface -- Introduction: in search of economic policies to stabilise democratic transitions / Giacomo Luciani -- Reflections on the arab uprisings / Samir Makdisi -- Rethinking the rentier curse / Adeel Malik -- A brief political economy of energy subsidies in the Middle East and...

Beginning in 2003, Turkey initiated a series of reforms under the Health Transformation Program (HTP) that over the past decade have led to the achievement of universal health coverage (UHC). The progress of Turkey?s health system has few, if any, parallels in scope and speed. Before the...

Our purpose here is to challenge the "big-bang" approach to economic history in which some alleged institutional imposition - a deus machine - is claimed to launch a series of new economic behaviors. This so-called prime mover is then carried forward by the inexorable forces of path dependency...

Beginning in 2003, Turkey initiated a series of reforms under the Health Transformation Program (HTP) that over the past decade have led to the achievement of universal health coverage (UHC). The progress of Turkey?s health system has few ? if any ? parallels in scope and speed. Before the...

"Foreign capital and free trade policies have provoked fierce conflicts in South American countries in recent years. Governments tried to quell the turmoil through repression, political maneuvering and propaganda. This book provides a dramatic account of the struggles, describing the corruption...

Introduction -- The agrarian question in the Russian Revolution: from material community to productivism, and back -- 'Socialism in one country' before Stalin, and the origins of reactionary 'anti-imperialism': the case of Turkey, 1917-25 -- The Spanish Revolution, past and future: grandeur and...

Weather shocks and natural disasters, it has been argued, represent a major threat to national and international security. Our paper contributes to the emerging micro-level strand of the literature on the link between local variations in weather shocks and conflict by focusing on a pixel-level...

After the ousting of former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak in February 2011, there was much debate about the reasons for the former regime's longevity and its collapse. Here, Safinaz El Tarouty provides an original contribution to the study of authoritarianism in Egypt by focusing on the role...

When and why do countries redistribute land to the landless? What political purposes does land reform serve, and what place does it have in today's world? A long-standing literature dating back to Aristotle and echoed in important recent works holds that redistribution should be both higher and...