ABSTRACT
In this chapter, Dominic Rohner looks at peacebuilding through an economic lens. The lion’s share of the contributions to this volume on instruments and tools for conflict prevention focus on concrete insights from specific cases and situations, often involving specific policies from China or Switzerland. This chapter takes a step back and offers a survey of statistical results from large studies published in economics and political science; it offers a summary of some recent statistical results on peace and war in economics and political science, before highlighting more concretely, towards the end of the chapter, how these findings could inspire governments and policy makers. Rohner starts by briefly outlining why one should care about tackling turmoil: conflicts are very costly from both a human and a socio-economic point of view. After this short discussion of motivation, the emphasis shifts to a few major root causes of fighting, namely poverty, natural resources, and ethnic division. The third and final part of this chapter will then focus on potential medications to cure the ills of political violence. In Rohner’s view, it is especially important to look at how different types of development interventions and different forms of economic support impact armed conflict.
