Advances in ending violence, promoting the rule of law, strengthening institutions and increasing access to justice are uneven and continue to deprive millions of their security, rights and opportunities and undermine the delivery of public services and broader economic development. Attacks on civil society are also holding back development progress. Renewed efforts are essential to move towards the achievement of Sustainable Development Goal 16.
Why do some postconflict states return to violence, while others remain at peace? Analysts increasingly credit postconflict justice institutions—such as truth commissions, amnesties, reparations, and trials—with contributing to the prevention…
There is growing awareness that development-oriented government policies may be an important counterinsurgency strategy, but existing papers are usually unable to disentangle various mechanisms. Using a regression-discontinuity design, we analyze…
This article examines the seductions of espionage for professionally vulnerable (untenured) researchers that employ ethnographic methods but are operating in the shadow of market incentives and the Global War on…
The analysis focuses on oil price shocks and local democracy in Colombia, a country mired in civil conflict. When the price of oil rises, legislators affiliated with right-wing paramilitary groups…
Decades of research across several disciplines have produced substantial evidence that labor unions, on balance, reduce economic disparities. But unions are complicated, multifaceted organizations straddling markets and politics. Much of…
Using an array of data and analysis, the book shows that fears about immigration fundamentally influence white Americans’ core political identities, policy preferences, and electoral choices, and that these concerns…
The Policy Design and Evaluation Lab (PDEL) is an international focal point for rigorous empirical research on the interplay of public policy, technology, and economic development. PDEL combines advanced social…
When do voters win? This paper derives conditions under which a democracy will produce policies that favor the voter over special interests in a setting where politicians can be influenced…