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A growing number of studies draw linkages between violent conflict and food scarcities. Yet, evidence suggests that within states, conflict revolves around food resources abundance. I develop an explanation for how the competition over food resources conditions the strategic behaviors of three actors: rebels, civilian producers who grow crops, and state forces. Using a statistical-strategic model, I validate my theory at the subnational level on new high specificity spatial data on staple crop access and productivity in Africa for the years 1998 to 2008 (and use the estimates to forecast conflict on out-of-sample data for 2009 to 2010). In line with theoretical expectations, local variations in food productivity have a positive, statistically significant, and substantive effect on the strategic behaviors of different actors. These findings suggest that the imperative for food denial as a microlevel tactic in civil war should be more seriously incorporated into the work of scholars and policy makers.

Political instabilities and violent political conflict have in recent years risen substantially throughout the world. Especially in the Middle East and North Africa they have grown to decisive factors permanently challenging the livelihoods of millions. We assess whether and to what extent varying intensities of conflict impact economic activity in Palestine which has been subject to substantial violent political conflict for decades. In particular, we analyse the relationship between various intensity levels of political instability measured by conflict-caused fatalities and uncertainty of weekly food prices in the West Bank between 2004 and 2011 using a GARCH model. We consider four food commodities covering vegetables, fruits and animal products. Banana and milk prices are found not to show clustered volatility while onion and pear prices do. The impact of varying conflict intensities on weekly average prices appears to be modest. This might suggest that effects happen on a temporally and geographically more disaggregated scale. ; peerReviewed

AbstractAre UN peacekeepers effective in protecting civilians from violence? Existing studies examine this issue at the country level, thereby making it difficult to isolate the effect of peacekeepers and to assess the actual mechanism at work. We provide the first comprehensive evaluation of UN peacekeeping success in protecting civilians at the subnational level. We argue that peacekeepers through their sizable local presence can increase the political and military costs for warring actors to engage in civilian targeting. Since peacekeepers' access to civilian populations rests on government consent, peacekeepers will primarily be effective in imposing these costs on rebel groups, but less so for government actors. To test these conjectures we combine new monthly data on the location of peacekeepers with data on the location and timing of civilian killings in Africa. Our findings suggest that local peacekeeping presence enhances the effectiveness of civilian protection against rebel abuse, but that UN peacekeeping struggles to protect civilians from government forces.

This article compares German Holocaust reparations with reparations regarding slavery and the slave trade in the United States and beyond. I review many historical reparations measures (proposed and realized) making them comparable in 2016 U.S. dollars. Based on slave-ship manifests, I investigate how reparations for the slave trade may be distributed. I propose that European slave-trade reparations could be used in Africa and the New World to indemnify the descendants of the formerly enslaved. Total and per-recipient amounts provide a wide range for possible negotiations. They range from only US$71.08 per recipient demanded by James Forman in 1969 to US$3.6 million per recipient actually paid by the descendants of Haiti's enslaved to the descendants of their former oppressors. The German example suggests that a political solution can be worked out if the representatives of the perpetrating side reach out to the representatives of the victimized side for negotiations.

Recently researchers have built on field experiences from novel and challenging settings to develop new insights into elite interviewing strategies, and specifically the question of access. One such context that has been underexplored is the weaker institutional environment found in much of the developing world. Many of the common suggestions regarding access emphasize an elite's relative insularity and unwillingness to participate in research due to issues of status and prestige. By contrast, in weaker institutional settings many elites are protected by fewer organizational safeguards, are more accustomed to in-person conversations, and are often quite willing to participate in research. The challenge is rather identifying elites to begin with, working around flexible scheduling norms, and adapting to a much more direct and persistent form of communication with elites. Drawing on insights derived mainly from fieldwork in Africa, this article identifies some best practices on how to prepare for elite interviews, organize logistically, and develop contacts once on-site.

Using independently sampled Gallup World Poll survey data from 140 countries, we explored the relationship between interpersonal contact and attitudes toward migrants from a perspective not typically found in the social psychological literature. We hypothesized that respondents who report personally knowing a migrant living in their home country would be more accepting of migrants generally (using a three-item Migrant Acceptance Index (MAI) score) than respondents who do not know a migrant. Results supported our hypothesis in 134 of the 140 countries suggesting that the strong relationship between interpersonal contact and attitudes toward migrants is near-universal. We also quantified migrant acceptance at the country level, finding a wide spectrum of attitudes toward migrants. Low acceptance countries were located primarily in Eastern and Southeastern Europe and high acceptance countries were located in Northern Europe and sub-Saharan Africa. We discuss these results in the context of interpersonal contact theory (Allport, 1954) and the larger context of global migration.

Revenues from taxation gain in importance to finance economic development in Sub-Saharan Africa. One obstacle to enhancing the willingness to remit taxes can be the extortion of bribes by public officials. Using micro-level data from the Afrobarometer, we show that petty corruption erodes tax morale. The effect on tax morale is more severe in countries and regions where fewer people are affected by petty corruption and becomes insignificant if extortion of bribes is particularly prevalent. Differing levels of civic participation and potential access to tax funded services are also found to induce heterogeneous reactions to corruption experience. Applying a mediation analysis, we demonstrate that petty corruption not only has a direct effect on tax morale but also diminishes confidence in tax authorities and therefore affects tax morale indirectly. The harmful effects of corruption experience, however, operate mainly through a generally lowered inclination to uphold high levels of tax morale.

Fertilizer and other input subsidies have been a prominent component of agricultural policies in many Asian and African countries since the 1960s. Their economic and political rationale is scrutinized with emphasis on the second generation of targeted input subsidy programs that were scaled up in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) after 2005. The extent to which they full-fill the goal of being 'market smart' is assessed after inspecting the potential for such subsidies in SSA. The new fertilizer subsidy programs do not live up the market smart principles and suffer from severe design and implementation failures. While a clear exit strategy was one of the key principles, this principle has been neglected with the result that most current programs are more 'sticky' than 'smart'. They have only partially achieved the intended impacts and have resulted in a number of unintended negative impacts. Redesign should start from a pilot stage testing basic mechanisms.

Zambia adopted a new constitution. General elections were held. Incumbent president Edgar Lungu of the Patriotic Front (PF) polled over the 50% needed for re-election but the results were challenged by the runner-up Hakainde Hichilema, candidate of the United Party for National Development (UPND). Post-electoral violence escalated in UPND strongholds. The PF secured a majority of parliamentary seats for the first time, while the first direct elections for mayors/council chairpersons revealed a clear balance between the PF and the UPND. The referendum on a new Bill of Rights failed. Lungu's international trips intensified with the strategic goals of attracting foreign investors and strengthening bilateral relations with key partners in Africa and the Middle East. Conditions for economic growth remained tough. The electricity supply deficit continued to affect households, mining activities and other business. The currency improved and copper prices increased. ; info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion

International audience ; Countries in sub-Saharan Africa face increasingly forms of settlements in the urban and selfplanned settlements 1 in the peri-urban area, where the lack of security of tenure, land conflicts, and informal land markets overwhelm the local governments in their task of Urban Planning and providing necessary public services. We believe it is possible to find innovative, locally adapted perspectives leading towards a more efficient, social, and local management. It is crucial to discover and establish drivers for change while taking traditions, local culture, and current developments into account. This paper examines the potentials of some ideas and regulations in Mozambique as opportunities to tackle the land ownership in Malawi. Our research tries to cope with this task by looking into common procedures as well as general theoretical approaches and attempting to answer the question, how the need for security and sustainable development perspectives for the largely 'informal' population can be achieved.

In recent years, international organisations have warned of the lethal trade in fake drugs particularly in Africa. This article assesses how and why fake pharmaceuticals have become a problem in Nigeria and how successful the state has been at regulating it, based on archival, official and interview data. While we show that the early roots of this trade can be found in colonial times, its expansion and growing policy concern were driven by crises in the Nigerian pharmaceutical industry and the healthcare system in the 1980s. In contrast to dominant explanations, we argue that the rise of fake drugs in Nigeria was closely linked to these national crises and related global trends towards market liberalisation and the commodification of health. In this unfavourable context, policies to regulate fake drugs remained limited as they only addressed the symptoms of a more fundamental political and economic problem: the shift from public health towards private wealth and profit-making.

Fertilizer and other input subsidies have been a prominent component of agricultural policies in many Asian and African countries since the 1960s. Their economic and political rationale is scrutinized with emphasis on the second generation of targeted input subsidy programs that were scaled up in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) after 2005. The extent to which they full-fill the goal of being 'market smart' is assessed after inspecting the potential for such subsidies in SSA. The new fertilizer subsidy programs do not live up the market smart principles and suffer from severe design and implementation failures. While a clear exit strategy was one of the key principles, this principle has been neglected with the result that most current programs are more 'sticky' than 'smart'. They have only partially achieved the intended impacts and have resulted in a number of unintended negative impacts. Redesign should start from a pilot stage testing basic mechanisms.

Abstract
This paper assesses the effect of foreign economic activity on Greek exports. We employ data from 1995:I to 2016:IV and quantify the long-run foreign income elasticity of Greek exports. We establish a cointegration relationship and employ Dynamic OLS estimations. We find that the aggregate foreign income elasticity of Greek exports is positive and significant. When foreign income is decomposed to the main trading partners, we reveal that economic
growth in Turkey and in emerging markets such as the Balkans, North Africa and the Middle East have the greatest impact on Greek exports. The impact of the traditional European trading partners of Greece (Germany and Italy) are found to be positive but insignificant. Finally, the dynamic analysis shows a positive interaction between real income growth in Turkey and Greek export growth at the short-run horizon.
JEL classifications: C22, F43
Keywords: Greece, exports, foreign income, cointegration

For Europe, four security challenges predominate: Russian revanchism, Islamist terrorism, the migrant crisis, and the associated problems of civil war and state collapse in the Middle East and North Africa. For India, the environment looks very different. Its two most important security challenges are cross-border terrorism from Pakistan-based militant groups, often sponsored by the Pakistani intelligence services, and the steady growth of China's economic and military presence along India's land and maritime borders, including as part of the Belt and Road Initiative. These differing priorities risk pushing Europe and India in different directions. India's hope is that an improved US-Russia relationship will create a thaw in Europe, allowing all parties—India, Europe and the US—to focus on addressing China's rise. But there is little sign of such a shift at present. However, there is considerable room for greater convergence on a range of issues, such as maritime security, Afghanistan and counterterrorism.