Development and Conflict Research (DACOR)
Project Background
In efforts to undermine the support base for violent and extremist groups, the U.S. government often relies on a standard set of policy interventions: a) the provision of security assistance to governments; b) efforts to encourage more inclusive governance (by encouraging decentralization or democratization); and c) welfare-enhancing development programs (e.g., education, agriculture, public works, and health). While the logic underlying each of these interventions is sound, recent research on terrorist and insurgent groups suggests such policies can be counterproductive or, at a minimum, are effective only under certain conditions.
IGCC Research Director Eli Berman and his partners at Princeton, Stanford, Yale, and UC Berkeley have undertaken a broad program of activities, carrying out theoretical, empirical and field research on terrorism, governance, and development in key locations around the world: Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Northern Ireland, the Philippines and Brazil. The project focuses on developing an integrated theory of counterinsurgency and counterterrorism by collecting and testing new data on political violence by violent extremist groups, religious and secular. This integrated theory could ultimately be used by U.S. policymakers as they allocate resources to both benign and coercive methods to counter political violence in conflicts around the world.
Members of the team have developed and tested highly influential theories that can form the building blocks of an integrated theory of political violence, governance, and development. This comprehensive, empirically-driven research program will extend and test those theories, using new data derived from field work and experiments conducted at a range of locations around the world.
This research program is training and supporting graduate students and young researchers in the rapidly growing research fields of political and economic development in conflict and post-conflict environments. Postdoctoral scholars for the 2011–2012 academic year are Michael Callen and Nicholai Lidow.
Activities
2011
Governance, Development, and Political Violence Workshop
2009
Governance, Development, and Political Violence Workshop
Conference: The Political Economy of Terrorism and Insurgency
2008
Conference: Responses to Political Violence and the Growth of Anti-Americanism
2007
Terrorist Organizations: Social Science Research on Terrorism
Publications and Papers
Nicholai Hart Lidow. Violent Order: Rebel Organization and Liberia’s Civil War. Book manuscript draft, May 2012.
Michael Callen and James D. Long. Institutional Corruption and Election Fraud: Evidence from a Field Experiment in Afghanistan. Working paper, March 2012.
Eli Berman, Jacob N. Shapiro and Joseph H. Felter, Can Hearts and Minds Be Bought? The Economics of Counterinsurgency in Iraq, Journal of Political Economy Vol. 119, No. 4 (August 2011), pp. 766-819
Eli Berman, Joseph H. Felter, Jacob N. Shapiro, and Michael Callen, Do Working Men Rebel? Insurgency and Unemployment in Afghanistan, Iraq, and the Philippines, Journal of Conflict Resolution, August 2011.
Daniel Egel, Tribal Heterogeneity and the Allocation of Development Resources: Evidence from Yemen, Working paper, March 2011.
Benjamin Lessing, The Danger of Dungeons: Gangs and Armed Groups in Prison, in Small Arms Survey 2010 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010).
Luke N. Condra, Joseph H. Felter, Radha K. Iyengar, and Jacob N. Shapiro, The Effect of Civilian Casualties in Afghanistan and Iraq, NBER Working Paper 16152, July 2010
Eli Berman, Joseph H. Felter and Jacob N. Shapiro, Constructive COIN: How Development Can Fight Radicals, Foreign Affairs online, June 1, 2010
Eli Berman, Radical, Religious and Violent: The New Economics of Terrorism (MIT Press, 2009)
Eli Berman, David D. Laitin, Religion, Terrorism and Public Goods: Testing the Club Model, Journal of Public Economics, 2008.
Eli Berman, Laurence R. Iannaccone, Religious Extremists: The Good, the Bad and the Deadly, Public Choice, 2006.
Related Reading
Research
