​Peacebuilding through Service Delivery

Scholars and practitioners alike have largely concluded that international efforts to build sustainable peace in post-conflict state must include a focus on building state capacity. It is not necessarily the case, however, that the twin goals of peace- and state-building are mutually reinforcing. This project seeks to improve both the theory and practice of how peace is achieved in post-conflict countries by disentangling the related goals of peace- and state-building. It does so by focusing on the ability of three post-conflict states to provide public services and resolve societal grievances at the local level. It also seeks to understand how externally led peace-building interventions compare with more autonomous and domestically motivated peace processes in achieving sustainable peace and improvements in state capacity. To these ends, we have designed and are implementing a study that varies the external engagement in peace- and statebuilding initiatives, selecting country cases that enable both a cross-national comparison (Cambodia and Laos, and Uganda and Rwanda) and an intertemporal comparison (Uganda in two distinct time periods). We focus on outcomes at the subnational and sectoral levels, where the tangible results of peace- and state-building can be best observed.
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Debating Democracy: Participation vs Contestation

** New Project**
Democracy has been classically defined as a political system that includes both contestation and participation. In recent decades, much emphasis has been placed on contestation, through the creation and support of free and fair electoral systems. The various forms of participation are much less well understood. What does democratic participation look like in formally democratic countries where the contestation component of democracy is less than robust? How do countries with robust participation, but compromised contestation, nuance our conception of democracy? This research examines Rwanda and Ethiopia, to evaluate their village to national participation systems and the ways in which those factor into the limited democracy that these countries embody.  
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Conflict Management
Negotiating Peace from the Inside and Out: Internally versus Externally Facilitated Peace Processes. ​  ** Ongoing Project** 

One of the fundamental challenges facing peace negotiators is the issue of whether peace talks should address the root causes of a conflict or to simply attempt to facilitate a ceasefire and allow domestic parties to manage their fundamental differences after the fighting ends. Often this dynamic is viewed in either-or terms, though many experienced negotiators would argue that both need to be considered simultaneously. A comparison of negotiations to end conflicts in South Africa and Burundi suggests that the identity of the negotiators is a key variable in explaining several critical aspects of peace negotiations, particularly the types of issues that are brought into the talks and how well the process withstands pressures to derail once difficult issues are opened. This project investigates these issues through a comparative case study of peace processes in South Africa and Burundi, focusing on the nature of the parties negotiating the peace agreements, the process of negotiations with particular emphasis on the types of issues raised during the talks, and how derailments were addressed when peace negotiations threatened to or did break down.
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