ABSTRACT
How unequal are war and post-war societies? And does the level of inequality matter for how we evaluate and practise statebuilding? This chapter takes these two questions as its point of departure and argues that it is useful to place stratification processes at the heart of how we conceptualise transitions from war to peace. It stresses that economic and political spheres are tightly bound together in war to peace transition. This connectedness may help to solidify inequality in the post-war period. Interestingly, inequality or, for that matter, the closely bound nature of political and economic spheres, are often overlooked in the statebuilding literature and in policy recommendations issued by multilateral organisations. This chapter seeks to highlight these omissions and, in a preliminary fashion, draw attention to the consequences of a failure to conceptualise and address inequality.
