Suchergebnisse

It seems that the current conflict in Syria is finishing, and a new phase of rebuilding is starting sooner. Setting a rebuilding strategy requires finding detailed and up-to-date figures, a challenging task to do in a time of conflict. We take the venture and compute poverty figures and profile during the conflict using nowcasting techniques based on a sample of households covered in the household income and expenditure survey (HIES) 2009. In addition to the practical importance of this article regarding the rebuilding process strategy of Syria, the article makes a methodological contribution to nowcast the poverty rates in countries plagued with civil conflicts.

AbstractCivil conflict is the nation's most important historical event, and it became more frequent in countries already emerged from previous conflicts. High economic growth, as well as other institutional procedures, is key to break this conflict trap. Thus, the current article explores the role decentralization may play to enhance economic growth in post-civil conflict countries. In order to avoid untrue peaceful cases, the article adopted a strict criterion of post-conflict periods, leading to a small dataset. Distinguishing between two forms of decentralization and using two equations with different techniques, the article finds a hampering effect of fiscal decentralization on economic growth in countries emerging from civil conflicts, while it finds insignificant mixed effects of political decentralization. These findings support the distinction made between the real de facto decentralization and the official de jure one. They validate the belief that although central authorities in many countries pretend to apply decentralization, they limit its effectiveness by some legal procedures creating "fake" decentralization.

Investigating different political and social variables in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) is receiving more attention between social scientists, particularly in the peace and conflict institutes. This is due to the uniqueness of the region and to the violent conflicts it has witnessed for the last decades. These conflicts become intrastate but transitional, hence transfer into internationalized civil conflicts, and have large externalities exceeding the region borders. These conflicts show the high connectedness between the MENA countries, and recently the Arab Spring affirms the 'contagion effect' of upheavals in the region. Following multidisciplinary approach, this research note is a try to explain how much important it is to study the MENA conflicts from a regional perspective and to present the factors proving the contagion effects there. We hope that when reading this note, the reader will sufficiently understand the regional aspects of the MENA conflicts.