In this issue:
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Introduction
Dear friends,
We are pleased to send you our fourth newsletter from the Economics of Civil War, Crime, and Violence research project at the World Bank. Since the last time we wrote to you, there have been a few developments in our project which we would like to tell you about. If this is the first newsletter you receive from us, you can learn more about our project at:
1. NEW RESEARCH
There are a number of new papers posted online, as well as revised versions of papers that were previously posted. Paul Collier and Anke Hoeffler (2000) have posted a new revised version of their paper "Greed and Grievance in Civil War." You can download the paper here:
A special December 2000 issue of the Journal of African Economies (Oxford) has been published with contributions from several members of our research group. We have also posted a paper by Michael W. Doyle and Nicholas Sambanis on peacebuilding after civil wars. The paper was published in the December 2000 issue of the American Political Science Review and is available with a data set, code book, and several supporting files here:
We are presently in the process of editing a special issue of the Journal of Conflict Resolution with some of the papers presented at our Princeton workshop in March 2000. The papers are currently under review and most of them can be accessed online at:
2. DATA
We will soon start posting all of the data sets used by authors affiliated by our project and we plan to create a substantial database on civil violence. Check the web-site periodically for new additions.
3. CONFERENCES
We are currently planning several conferences and workshops.
On May 18-20, 2001, we will hold a workshop at the University of California at Irvine, in collaboration with Irvine's Center for Global Peace and Conflict Studies. The workshop will focus on the determinants of civil war duration, war-to-peace transition, peacebuilding and postwar economic development. Scholars from several universities will participate in the workshop. A website with information on the workshop, including names and bios of participants and copies of the papers to be presented will be built in the early spring.
On June 8-10, in collaboration with the International Peace Research Institute, Oslo (PRIO) and the Department of Peace and Conflict Research at Uppsala University, we are co-sponsoring a conference in Uppsala, Sweden year on the question of measuring armed conflict. The conference is sponsored by the European Union and will have broad international participation. Representatives of the leading data projects will be present to compare data-generating procedures and to map out priorities for future data collection. Participation is primarily by invitation, but some places are open for others who come at their own expense. If you would like to participate, please send an e-mail to margareta.sollenberg@pcr.uu.se with a copy to npg@prio.no. Your chances of being included in the conference will increase if you contribute a paper on the main topic of measuring armed conflict (or on related measurement issues). We may cover your expenses if (a) if you have collected an important data set on armed conflict which the organizers have overlooked and (b) (because of EU regulations) if you are under 35 and a citizen of the EU. Finally, we are launching the third phase of the World Bank's Project by initiating a large case-study project. The case-studies will complement the theoretical and cross-national quantitative studies we have conducted to date. We have already commissioned several studies and are preparing a set of guidelines for these studies. We are also organizing a workshop in Oslo, Norway, on June 11-12, 2001, to meet with the prospective case-study authors and discuss their proposals. The workshop will set the parameters of the project and facilitate the drafting of cases that will facilitate comparisons along important dimensions. We will create a special area on our web site to communicate with case-study authors and post relevant information, such as research guidelines, initial proposals, first drafts, data, and bibliographies.
4. RELATED PROJECTS
We would like to draw your attention to a new study on civil conflict posted online at the website of the Center of International Development and Conflict Management of the University of Maryland College Park.
The Center's home page includes a remarkable new data set on civil war produced by the State Failure Task Force. You can access the data here:
We also wanted to point you to a new study on conflict prevention: Fen Hampson and David M. Malone (Eds.). From Reaction to Prevention: Opportunities for the UN System (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, forthcoming). In parallel with the Bank's work on the economics of violence and crime, the International Peace Academy, an independent research and policy development institution that frequently works along side the UN Security Council and Secretariat, has initiated a policy project, Greed and Grievance: Economic Agendas in Civil Wars that will examine, inter alia, the following: the criminalization of economies during civil wars; corporate motivations and strategies in civil war situations; and the parameters of an effective international regulatory and legal framework to address white collar crime in situations of war. This project is designed to draw heavily on, and, to some degree, complement DERG's work.
5. To Receive or Stop Receiving this Newsletter
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