Jeremy M. Weinstein

Why Does Ethnic Diversity Undermine Public Goods Provision

A large and growing literature links high levels of ethnic diversity to low levels of public goods provision. Yet although the empirical connection between ethnic heterogeneity and the underprovision of public goods is widely accepted, there is little consensus on the specific mechanisms through which this relationship operates. We identify three families of mechanisms that link diversity to public goods provision—what we term “preferences,” “technology,” and “strategy selection” mechanisms—and run a series of experimental games that permit us to compare the explanatory power of distinct mechanisms within each of these three families. Results from games conducted with a random sample of 300 subjects from a slum neighborhood of Kampala, Uganda, suggest that successful public goods provision in homogenous ethnic communities can be attributed to a strategy selection mechanism: in similar settings, co-ethnics play cooperative equilibria, whereas non-co-ethnics do not. In addition, we find evidence for a technology mechanism: co-ethnics are more closely linked on social networks and thus plausibly better able to support cooperation through the threat of social sanction. We find no evidence for prominent preference mechanisms that emphasize the commonality of tastes within ethnic groups or a greater degree of altruism toward co-ethnics, and only weak evidence for technology mechanisms that focus on the impact of shared ethnicity on the productivity of teams.

Resources and the Information Problem in Rebel Recruitment

How does the resource base of a rebel group impact its membership, structure, and behavior? While scholars, analysts, and policy makers increasingly link natural resources to the onset and duration of civil war, this article explores how resource endowments shape the character and conduct of rebel groups. This article identifies a rebel “resource curse” much like the one that undermines state institutions in resource-rich environments. While the presence of economic endowments makes it possible for leaders to recruit on the basis of short-term rewards, these groups are flooded with opportunistic joiners who exhibit little commitment to the long-term goals of the organization. In resource-poor environments, leaders attract new recruits by drawing on social ties to make credible promises about the private rewards that will come with victory. Opportunistic joiners stay away from these movements, leaving a pool of activist recruits willing to invest their time and energy in the hope of reaping large gains in the future.

Handling and Manhandling Civilians in Civil War

The toll of civil conflict is largely borne by civilian populations, as warring factions target non-combatants through campaigns of violence. But significant variation exists in the extent to which warring groups abuse the civilian population: across conflicts, across groups, and within countries geographically and over time. Using a new dataset on fighting groups in Sierra Leone, this article analyzes the determinants of the tactics, strategies, and behaviors that warring factions employ in their relationships with noncombatants. We first describe a simple logic of extraction which we use to generate hypotheses about variation in levels of abuse across fighting units. We then show that the most important determinants of civilian abuse are internal to the structure of the faction. High levels of abuse are exhibited by warring factions that are unable to police the behavior of their members because they are more ethnically fragmented, rely on material incentives to recruit participants, and lack mechanisms for punishing indiscipline. Explanations that emphasize the importance of local community ties and contestation do not find strong support in the data.

Demobilization and Reintegration

Since 1989, international efforts to end protracted conflicts have included sustained investments in the disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration (DDR) of combatants. Yet while policy analysts have debated the factors that contribute to successful DDR programs and scholars have reasoned about the macro conditions that facilitate successful peace building, little is known about the factors that account for successful reintegration at the micro level. Using a new dataset of ex-combatants in Sierra Leone, this article analyzes the individual-level determinants of demobilization and reintegration. Past participation in an abusive military faction is the strongest predictor of difficulty in achieving social reintegration. On economic and political reintegration, we find that wealthier and more educated combatants face greater difficulties. Ideologues, men, and younger fighters are the most likely to retain strong ties to their factions. Most important, we find little evidence at the micro level that internationally funded programs facilitate demobilization and reintegration.

Rebuilding Weak States

Stuart E. Eizenstat, head of the international practice at Covington & Burling, was Undersecretary of State and Deputy Secretary of the Treasury during the Clinton administration. John Edward Porter, a partner at Hogan & Hartson, was a U.S. Representative from Illinois for 21 years. Jeremy M. Weinstein, Assistant Professor of Political Science at Stanford University and Non-Resident Fellow at the Center for Global Development, served as Project Director of the centers Commission on Weak States and U.S. National Security. The other two authors co-chaired the commission.

Autonomous Recovery and International Intervention in Comparative Perspective

There is growing recognition that significant threats to collective security emerge not only from competition among great powers, but also from the disorder, violence, and oppression wrought by governments (or occurring in the absence of effective governance) across the developing world. Scholars have responded by proposing new models of intervention—including neo-trusteeship and shared sovereignty—that respond to these failures of governance. But these calls for intervention rest on two underlying assumptions that have escaped serious consideration: the idea the countries cannot recover from conflict on their own and the argument that intervention is the best strategy for state-building. In this article, I define and describe a process of autonomous recovery in which states achieve a lasting peace, a systematic reduction in violence, and post-war political and economic development in the absence of international intervention. I offer a series of theoretical reasons to take it seriously and use case studies of recovery in Uganda, Eritrea, and Somalia to demonstrate how it works in practice. I conclude by identifying three tradeoffs—for the country on the receiving end of intervention—that policymakers confront when weighing whether and how to respond to internal conflict.

Disentangling the Determinants of Successful Demobilization and Reintegration

Since 1989, international efforts to end protracted conflicts in Africa, Latin America, and Asia have included sustained investments in the disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration (DDR) of combatants from the warring parties. Yet, while policy analysts have debated the organizational factors that contribute to a successful DDR program, little is known about the factors that account for successful DDR at the micro level. Using a new dataset of ex-combatants in Sierra Leone, this paper analyzes, for the first time, the individual level determinants of demobilization and reintegration. Conventional views about the importance of age and gender for understanding reintegration find little support in the data. Instead, we find that an individual’s prospect of gaining acceptance from family and neighbors depends largely on the abusiveness of the unit in which he or she fought. Finally, while internationally-funded programs designed to assist the demobilization and reintegration process may have had an effect at the macro-level, we find no evidence that those who participated in DDR programs had an easier time gaining acceptance from their families or communities as compared to those who did not participate.

Development Assistance, Institution Building, and Social Cohesion after Civil War: Evidence from a Field Experiment in Liberia

Can brief, foreign-funded efforts to build local institutions have positive effects on local patterns of governance, cooperation, and well-being? Prior research suggests that such small-scale, externally driven interventions are unlikely to substantially alter patterns of social interaction in a community, and that the ability of a community to act collectively is the result of a slow and necessarily indigenous process. We address this question using a randomized field experiment to assess the effects of a community-driven reconstruction (CDR) project carried out by the International Rescue Committee (IRC) in northern Liberia. The project attempted to build democratic, community-level institutions for making and implementing decisions about local public goods. We find powerful evidence that the program was successful in increasing social cohesion, some evidence that it reinforced democratic political attitudes and increased confidence in local decision-making procedures, but only weak evidence that material well-being was positively affected. There is essentially no evidence of adverse effects.

Mozambique: A Fading U.N. Success Story

As Mozambique enters its tenth year of peace following a brutal and destructive civil war, the signs of continued democratic transformation and pro-market economic reform appear rosy, at least at first glance. Donors and the international community have quietly lauded Joaquim Chissano’s recent announcement that he is “not disposed” to seek a third term as president of this former Portuguese colony of 17 million on the southeast coast of Africa. Together with President Frederick Chiluba’s similar announcement in Zambia a few months ago, it looks to many like an indication that these two African democracies are maturing and consolidating the gains that they have made in recent years. Mozambique’s continued place atop the list of the world’s fastestgrowing economies has been seen as another signal that commitment to the “Washington Consensus” will provide the funds required to bring infrastructure, schools, and health care to the rural majority. It is no wonder, then, that Mozambique finds itself highlighted as a success story for the United Nations in conflict-ridden Africa. Many credit Mozambique’s remarkable transformation to the UN’s efforts to sustain the drawn-out peace negotiations, demobilize more than 90,000 soldiers, rebuild a unified national army, and foster the rise of a legitimate, peaceful opposition. Donor investments continue to support Mozambique today, funding more than half of the government’s annual budget. On the ground in Mozambique, however, the continuation of this upward trajectory looks anything but guaranteed. The newspapers hint at trouble just beneath the surface: two major bank failures, the Jeremy M. Weinstein is a doctoral candidate in political economy and government at Harvard University and a graduate student fellow of the Center for International Development. This article is based in part on research he conducted in formerly Renamo-controlled areas in central and northern Mozambique.

How Does Development Assistance Affect Collective Action Capacity? Results from a Field Experiment in Post-Conflict Liberia

Social cooperation is critical to a wide variety of political and economic outcomes. For this reason, international donors have embraced interventions designed to strengthen the ability of communities to solve collective-action problems, especially in post-conflict settings. We exploit the random assignment of a development program in Liberia to assess the effects of such interventions. Using a matching funds experiment we find evidence that these interventions can alter cooperation capacity. However, we observe effects only in communities in which, by design, both men and women faced the collective action challenge. Focusing on mechanisms, we find evidence that program effects worked through improvements in mobilization capacity that may have enhanced communities’ ability to coordinate to solve mixed gender problems. These gains did not operate in areas where only women took part in the matching funds experiment, possibly because they could rely on traditional institutions unaffected by the external intervention. The combined evidence suggests that the impact of donor interventions designed to enhance cooperation can depend critically on the kinds of social dilemmas that communities face, and the flexibility they have in determining who should solve them.