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The Najib government, the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan, and prospects for Soviet troop withdrawal.

This research report explores when and how amnesties are used during conflict and transitions towards peace. In particular, it examines how the context in which amnesties are adopted can shape decisions on whether to limit the material or personal scope of amnesties or to attach conditions to the grant of amnesty; or on their range of legal effects. The report argues that these aspects of amnesty design can have significant implications for the extent to which amnesty can contribute to inclusive political settlements or conversely to excluding some individuals or groups from the post-conflict political contract. The report draws on the new Amnesties, Conflict, and Peace Agreement (ACPA) dataset to conduct a large-scale comparative analysis of trends in state practice on conflict and peace-related amnesties. The findings of this report contribute significantly to the fledgling literature on the role of amnesties in resolving armed conflicts by documenting and analysing the specific forms and functions of amnesties enacted during conflict and peace and exploring how they are tied to the negotiation and implementation of peace processes.

Past and present attempts to stabilize war-torn Somalia through military, diplomatic and humanitarian interventions highlight the entanglements and interplay between local and foreign elites in policies and practices that have frequently and effectively undermined statebuilding in south-central Somalia. Existing analyses have focused predominantly on local actors and internal dynamics to account for the continuous political disorder in the former Somali Democratic Republic since 1991. In contrast, this study highlights the role of external aid in dysfunctional statebuilding efforts in Somalia. Rather than assuming that foreign actors are outside the local and national political settlements, such actors should rather be seen as an integral part of these processes. Consequently, the power and interests of both Somali and international actors must be taken into consideration in order to understand the shortcomings of stabilization policies. Persistent tactics by Somali elites—mobilizing, appropriating and redirecting foreign resources and agendas—have been at the core of failed statebuilding. Such tactics form part of what French Africanist Jean-François Bayart has described as 'extraversion'. Because Somali elites have regularly turned their participation in transitional governments into a resource appropriation tactic, statebuilding has become an end in itself rather than the outcome of a more profound process of actual state formation that would have entailed the centralization of coercion, the generation of public revenue or the building up of popular support. ; Past and present attempts to stabilize war-torn Somalia through military, diplomatic and humanitarian interventions highlight the entanglements and interplay between local and foreign elites in policies and practices that have frequently and effectively undermined statebuilding in south-central Somalia. Existing analyses have focused predominantly on local actors and internal dynamics to account for the continuous political disorder in the former Somali Democratic Republic since 1991. In contrast, this study highlights the role of external aid in dysfunctional statebuilding efforts in Somalia. Rather than assuming that foreign actors are outside the local and national political settlements, such actors should rather be seen as an integral part of these processes. Consequently, the power and interests of both Somali and international actors must be taken into consideration in order to understand the shortcomings of stabilization policies. Persistent tactics by Somali elites—mobilizing, appropriating and redirecting foreign resources and agendas—have been at the core of failed statebuilding. Such tactics form part of what French Africanist Jean-François Bayart has described as 'extraversion'. Because Somali elites have regularly turned their participation in transitional governments into a resource appropriation tactic, statebuilding has become an end in itself rather than the outcome of a more profound process of actual state formation that would have entailed the centralization of coercion, the generation of public revenue or the building up of popular support.

Statements before the Subcommittee on East Asian and Pacific Affairs, Foreign Relations Committee, US Senate, July 20, 1990.

AbstractWhereas the political settlements research framework is garnering growing policy attention in development programming, including in fragile and conflict‐affected states, there are concerns that political settlements constitute yet another global policy development with which feminist and gender analysis must 'catch up'. The article outlines four broad challenges to advancing gender analysis through the political settlements framework. The first is conceptual, that the focus on elites, and the reliance on public sphere dynamics to explain development outcomes, structurally excludes women. The second is epistemological, that the role of the scholar in designating certain groups to be 'elites' and others to be 'non‐elites' merits further interrogation. The third is methodological, that because of other exclusions, gender is infrequently identified as a pertinent variable or category of analysis in seeking to explain development outcomes through the political settlements framework. The final is political, that the avowedly non‐normative position of political settlements analysis risks overlooking norms implicit to the work, in particular implicit gender norms. Nevertheless, the article argues, in the prevailing context of technocratic approaches to global gender policy‐making, the political settlements framework may offer promise through its avowed focus on 'doing politics'. Moreover, the political settlements framework may usefully counter the tendency of global gender policy to essentialise the state as a single domain of activity, and to instead utilise more fully the different constituencies within the state, and the relationships between them, in order to effect positive change. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.