ABSTRACT
Over the last two decades, various scholarly literatures and political initiatives have addressed the economic characteristics and consequences of armed conflicts. These involved issues such as ‘blood diamonds’ and other conflict goods, economically motivated armed violence, self-financing conflict, or the complicity of companies, state elites, or warlords in conflict economies. Usually, these issues have been treated as part of the conflict, and therefore, as an inherent problem for its resolution. This book proposes to change our optics on the economic dimensions of armed conflicts, and perceive them as opportunities, rather than obstacles, for peacemaking; hence it examines how the integration of a political economy perspective into peace initiatives contributes to ending an armed conflict, and supporting war-to-peace transitions.
