Addison, Tony, ed., From Conflict to Recovery in Africa (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003). Addison’s pioneering contribution shows how broad-based economic recovery does not inevitably follow from peace settlements and discusses how such recovery can and should be achieved to avoid relapse into conflict. Several case studies on Africa provide evidence.
Addison, Tony, and Tilman Brück, eds, Making Peace Work: The Challenges of Social and Economic Reconstruction (London and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009). This volume provides case studies on major issues affecting economic and social reconstruction, including the economics of war and natural resources, horizontal inequalities, rebuilding fiscal institutions, physical and social infrastructure development, and entrepreneurship.
Ballentine, Karen, and Jake Sherman, eds, The Political Economy of Armed Conflict: Beyond Greed and Grievance (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2003). Seminal work on the dynamics of war economies and the challenges these pose for conflict resolution and sustainable peace, with case studies on Burma, Colombia, Kosovo, Papua New Guinea, and Sri Lanka.
Barakat, Sultan, After the Conflict: Reconstruction and Development in the Aftermath of War (London: I. B. Tauris, 2005). This book addresses critical issues of reconstruction and development in war-torn countries, including peace agreements, conflictual peacebuilding, aid, humanitarian assistance, land, health, and reintegration of former combatants, and it proposes basic pillars for reconstruction.
Berdal, Mats, “Peacebuilding and Development,” in B. Currie-Alder, R. Kanbur, D. M. Malone, and R. Medhora, eds, International Development (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014). In this influential article, Berdal analyzes peacebuilding as an activity that envisages a major role to economics and development policies and actors, discusses the operational challenges of involving the latter in politically sensitive tasks, and presents key policy priorities of donors and the international financial institutions.
Berdal, Mats, and Achim Wennmann, Ending Wars, Consolidating Peace: Economic Perspectives (London and New York: Routledge for The International Institute for Strategic Studies, 2010). This book addresses how economic factors can positively shape and drive peace processes but often lead to failure with peacebuilding and reconstruction. Key economic reconstruction issues relating to aid, fiscal capacity, the utilization of natural resources, and the role of the Bretton Woods institutions are analyzed.
Berrebi, Claude, and Sarah Olmstead, “Establishing Desirable Economic Conditions,” in Paul K. Davis, ed., Dilemmas of Intervention: Social Science for Stabilization and Reconstruction (Washington, DC: RAND Corporation, 2011). This important article on economic stabilization and reconstruction draws a clear distinction between post-conflict and other development settings and frames economic and social reconstruction strategies amid the security and political challenges and reform taking place in the country.
Boyce, James K., ed., Economic Policy for Building Peace: The Lessons from El Salvador (Boulder, Colo., and London: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1996). This early and important contribution to the field of economic reconstruction in poor countries coming out of civil war, focuses on how economic policies should be reshaped for their special circumstances and needs so that they can address the root causes of the conflict to avoid relapse.
Boyce, J. K., and M. O’Donnell, eds, Peace and the Public Purse: Economic Policies for Postwar State-Building (Boulder, Colo., and London: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2007). This important book addresses issues that diplomats and peace negotiators often neglect: building a durable peace and avoiding an aid trap requires building a state with the ability to collect revenue, allocate resources and manage expenditures effectively. It provides case studies on countries and issues, including monetary policy and postwar debts.
Caplan, Robert, International Governance of War-Torn Territories: Premises and Reconstruction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005). Chapter 6, “Economic Reconstruction and Development,” 135–157, provides interesting and cogent arguments on some of the major challenges of economic reconstruction and warns against some neoliberal policies often adopted that are not always suited to countries recovering from war.
Collier, Paul, “Postconflict Economic Policy,” Chapter 5 in Charles T. Call, Building States to Build Peace (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2008). Recognizing that until recently, development organizations did not systematically distinguished post-conflict settings as requiring a distinctive approach, this important article accepts that in fact, post-conflict reconstruction should not be simply development as usual.
De Soto, Álvaro, and Graciana del Castillo, “Obstacles to Peacebuilding,” Foreign Policy, 94 (Spring 1994); and “Obstacles to Peacebuilding Revisited,” Global Governance, 22 (April–June 2016). The first article identifies the lack of capacity of the UN to deal with major obstacles to UN peacebuilding efforts posed by restrictions imposed by IMF-sponsored economic programs. The second argues that the UN seems no better prepared today than it was at the end of the Cold War to deal with such obstacles and that the organization continues to neglect the economic aspects of peacebuilding at its own risk.
Del Castillo, Graciana, Guilty Party: The International Community in Afghanistan (Bloomington, Ind.: XLibris, 2nd edition, 2016). While most books on the Afghan War cover security and political issues, this book posits that inclusive and sustainable growth rather than war is the answer to extremism, insurgency, drugs, and poverty. It focuses on what went wrong with US-led intervention and what can still be done to bring peace, stability, and prosperity to the country and the region.
Del Castillo, Graciana, Rebuilding War-Torn States: The Challenge of Post-Conflict Economic Reconstruction (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008). This book provides a comprehensive analysis of economic reconstruction amid the multipronged transition to peace, arguing that unless the political objective prevails at all times, peace will be ephemeral, while policies that pursue purely economic objectives can have tragic consequences.
Junne, G., and W. Verkoren, eds, Post-Conflict Development (Boulder, Colo., and London: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2005). This book focuses on the need to move beyond emergency relief to create new social and economic structures (including policies, infrastructure, social services, and environmental and financing mechanisms) that can serve as the foundations to lasting peace.
Langer, Arnim, and Graham K. Brown, eds, Building Sustainable Peace: Timing and Sequencing of Post-Conflict Reconstruction and Peacebuilding (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016). This groundbreaking work covers the timing and sequencing challenges, dilemmas, and tradeoffs of different policy reforms and their consequences for the transition to peace. It also provides evidence that many reforms thought to be critical during the transition are better left for the long-term “development as usual” phase.
Looney, Robert, “Neoliberalism in a Conflict State: The Viability of Economic Shock Therapy in Iraq,” Strategic Insights, III/6 (June 2004). This excellent analysis covers the controversies between the Bush Administration emphasis on neoliberal policies in the form of “shock therapy” as the solution to Iraq’s reconstruction, those in the field facing political constraints and uncertainty who argued for a more step-by-step approach, and Iraqis who perceived US-led policies as a western experiment geared towards benefiting from their oil and other assets.
Myerson, Roger, “Standards for State-Building Interventions,” in Robert M. Solow, ed., Economics for the Curious: Inside the Minds of 12 Nobel Laureates (London and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014). Nobel Laureate Myerson argues that successful democratic development depends on the availability of leaders that can use public funds responsibly in providing services and good governance. Foreign interveners must create opportunities for political and economic decentralization so that local leaders can develop a good reputation to get elected not only at the local but also at national levels.
Savage, James D., Reconstructing Iraq’s Budgetary Institutions: Coalition State Building After Saddam (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013). This book is much more than an excellent case study of the fiscal issues and budgetary process reform – formulation, approval, and execution – in Iraq. It clearly identifies a set of U.S. interagency problems which has affected the impact of U.S. operations and performance in Iraq as they have in other war-torn countries, particularly Afghanistan.
Woodward, S., “Economic Priorities for Successful Peace Implementation,” in Stephen J. Stedman, Donald Rothchild, and Elizabeth M. Cousens, eds, Ending Civil Wars: The Implementation of Peace Agreements (Boulder, Colo., and London: Lynne Rienner, 2002), 183–214. The article’s seminal contribution was to warn of the lack of any systematic analysis by academics and policymaking practitioners of the contribution of economic factors to peacebuilding. The author discusses the necessary economic tasks and barriers to peace implementation and identifies five emerging lessons.