7AAJM210Stacey Gutkowski

Poverty as the cause of conflict? Aid as ambiguous?

New Wars in developing nations

Removal of Cold War financing

Increased interest in the political economy of these new wars

A shift in development paradigms to responsibilization and good governance

‘Root Causes’ of conflict Those factors which made a country

more or less likely to experience conflict MAY include…low GDP, high dependence on primary

commodity exports, high ethno-linguistic fractionalization,

geographic position, type of government (Sambanis,

Collier, World Bank)

Collier (2000) – ‘greed thesis’ – economic motives the most reliable conflict predictor in terms of outbreak and continuation of conflict – econometric analysis

Economic factors can act as predictors of violent conflict (or conflict-prone societies)

Combatants are motivated by economic factors – greed and need

Doubling of per capita income halves the risk of civil war

Conflict motivated by greed but combatants use the language of grievance

Civil wars break out where rebel groups are financially viable

Has found significant favour with governments and international organisations – focused on poverty reduction and diversification (often neo-liberal) but has been widely debated and criticized

Munkler 2005 – availability of young untrained men and weapons makes civil war ‘downright cheap’ and ‘highly lucrative’ – war is entrepreneurial, those who engage in it run it like a business and aim to make a profit

The greed thesis suggests that war has become a commodity to be captured or a situation to be exploited (rent seeking)

This set of arguments was to counter those who argued that issues of identity such as ethnicity, religion or tribe were key to the onset of civil war

Seemed to provide a rational explanation for the ‘new wars’

Matched the biases of the IFIs in their search for technocratic, rationalist explanations for conflict and its remedies

Helped explain Complex Humanitarian Emergencies and the ‘failures’ of intervention

Collier & Hoeffler (2004) demonstrated a high correlation between those countries who experienced conflict and the poorest countries (the ‘bottom billion’ – Collier 2007)

Countries who have experienced conflict have a high chance of relapsing within 5 years (the ‘conflict trap’)

Clear(er) solution: Aid as conflict prevention

Statistics unreliable (Cramer 2002) High male unemployment used as a

proxy for ‘greed’ (Kandeh 2005) (general proxy problem)

Pays insufficient attention to (and absolves) the role of external actors (Pugh and Cooper 2004) and attention to single state overlooks regional dynamics

Correlation mistaken for causation (Mac Ginty 2003)

Poverty on its own is not enough to cause conflict (Sen 2006)

Consensus now that greed AND grievance (wars do take place in poor countries but that is not the catalyst) and will vary by conflict – economic factors need to spark with other factors (Homer-Dixon 1994,

Cramer 2006)

The injection of security into the relief-to-development continuum

For the international development community a shift from working around conflict to working in and on conflict

In 2010 a move away from ‘conflict and security’ as an overt programme area

Towards a mainstreaming of conflict prevention and crisis management in all development activities (food security, youth, education)

Overt development of joint military-diplomatic-development units & joined-up funding

Mark Duffield 2001

Conflict overseas is a threat to British security than cannot be dealt with by counter-terrorism alone

Increased aid to Pakistan by 40% while cutting aid to others

Provincial Reconstruction Teams and UK Stabilisation Unit Integration with civilian organisations (incl

NGOs) Population-centric warfare

Lack of training, high levels of turnover (rotation), time pressure, complex environment (RAND 2011 for UK Stabilisation Unit)

Lack of metrics (Save the Children 2004; US National Defence University 2009)

Where there is monitoring and evaluation, it lacks independence and specificity.

Realist Constructivist Biopolitical Marxist/World systems Melancholic

Injection of international aid may lead to renewed conflict (Herring and Esman 2003)

CSD is another way of justifying the realist interests of powerful nations

Useful reading: Keen 2008, Complex Emergencies

Welsh 2004, Humanitarian Intervention and International Relations

Wheeler 2000, Saving Strangers

The media constructs categories (victim, migrant, civilian, guerilla)

Bureaucratic – CSD is a new way for international institutions to perpetuate themselves

Postcolonial – the victim/saviour construct is integral to liberal self identity in the global north

Development discourse becomes one of risk aversion and threat minimization

(Mark Duffield, David Chandler, Christine Sylvester)

Containment of threats in the Global South

Cure (elimination of root causes) – poverty and underdevelopment presented as pathology

Self-management and self-reliance – people should help themselves

CSD paradigm ignores the role that Global North plays in perpetuating conflict dynamics through demand for products, amnesty for corrupt elites, investment in oppressive regimes (Nordstrom 2008)

Problems caused by liberalization Unemployment as state employees sacked Price rises as exchanges formalized and monetized Forced to pay foreign debt Forced to open markets and local goods can’t compete with cheap imports

That the narrative of unimpeded, peaceful progress is ahistorical

Can violence be eliminated?

Does violence have important transformative effects? Does it generate development and political change?

.

Most scholars agree that a combination of greed and grievance sustain conflict.

Resources such as oil and diamonds do not cause conflict but the management of their extraction often sustains it.

Violent conflict can distort an economy, as can aid and peace support.

Since the 1990s the international community has more closely tied development efforts and security imperatives.