Conflict and development: Recent research advances and future agendas

TL;DR: In this article, the authors present a review on the role of civilian agency in conflict; on wartime institutions; and on the private sector in conflict, identifying where academic research has started to establish stylized facts and where methodological and knowledge gaps remain.

Abstract: We survey selected parts of the growing literature on the microeconomics of violent conflict, identifying where academic research has started to establish stylized facts and where methodological and knowledge gaps remain. We focus our review on the role of civilian agency in conflict; on wartime institutions; and on the private sector in conflict. Future research requires new and better sources of data on conflict and conflict impacts, including from household surveys in conflict-affected areas. Impact evaluations can also be valuable sources of insights about how conflict impacts on people and how peacebuilding and reconstruction can be improved. We also see the need for much more detailed studies on the long-term impacts of conflict; on the linkages between agriculture, food security, and conflict; on the role of technology for peace; and on the micro–macro linkages of conflict, as well its macroeconomic costs. Finally, future research would benefit from linking analysis of large-scale violent conflict with other forms of violence, instability, fragility, and humanitarian crises.

Summary

1 Introduction

• The last two decades have seen an explosion of research on the relationship between violent conflict and economic development.
• The 2011 World Development Report on ‘Conflict, Security and Development’, published by the World Bank (2011), firmly established armed conflict at the centre of development policy and research.
• At the same time, the intractable development and security challenges in both Iraq and Afghanistan helped persuade a larger audience that their knowledge base on conflict and development was weak and that the jury was out on how best to achieve development and security in conflict and fragile states.
• Research on the relationship between conflict and development has generated hundreds of studies over the last two decades.
• But the focus of research has changed substantially in terms of theoretical approaches, empirical methodologies, and use of different data.

2.1 Shifting to the micro level

• The first main advance has been a shift from state to micro levels of analysis.
• This research was very useful in advancing understanding about global patterns that drive some types of conflict, but it was less useful in uncovering mechanisms that may explain sub-national patterns of conflict, including variation in types, forms, and consequences of violence, and variation in the consequences of violent conflict across social groups and regions.
• Limited attention was also paid to individuals beyond immediate humanitarian needs.

2.2 Civilian agency in conflict contexts

• The second related advance has been a greater emphasis on civilian agency.
• Many build tremendous resilience in the face of violence (Justino 2012, 2013).
• Some people succeed in ‘navigating’ the conflict, others do not (Zetter and Verwimp 2011; Justino 2012).
• Their choices and behaviour (voluntary or involuntary), in turn, shape dynamics of conflict on the ground including where to fight, with whom, and for how long (Justino 2013; Arjona 2015), and set the stage for how interventions to build peace, stability, and economic prosperity in conflict-affected contexts may succeed or fail (Autesserre 2010).
• Recent research has also shown that, although violent conflict is associated with many adverse outcomes for civilians, in some cases experiences of recruitment and victimization may result in increased individual political and social participation and leadership once the war is over (Bellows and Miguel 2009; Blattman 2009), and in stronger forms of altruism and social cooperation (Voors et al. 2010).

2.3 Wartime institutions

• The third advance has been a better understanding of how institutional transformations during conflict affect post-conflict processes.
• An emerging research agenda has argued that understanding societies and economies affected by armed conflict is not possible without an in-depth understanding of the nature of the violence and, importantly, the nature of the institutional changes caused by it (Justino 2013, 2016b).
• These are often violent, but not everywhere nor at all times (Kalyvas et al.
• These groups have in common the fact that their institutions are persistent and last even though the conflict may be over.

2.4 The private sector

• The role of the private sector in post-conflict development and peace durability is embedded at both the local and national levels.
• Entrepreneurship can have stabilizing effects at the local level, while large-scale investment and capital deepening can support institutional stabilization.
• What remains is a gap in the literature on local-level entrepreneurship and firm behaviour in post-conflict settings, and the impact that entrepreneurialism has on both peace and conflict duration (Brück et al. 2013).
• As private sector actors enter into post-conflict markets, there needs to be awareness that the private sector may have played a role in the conflict and the ability to account for risks associated with bringing a new commercial agenda into a fragile political environment (Bray 2009).
• Bozzoli et al. (2013) point out that displacement also affects entrepreneurship, driving down self-employment wages in areas people are displaced to.

3 Future agendas

• While the study of conflict and conflict processes has expanded significantly, with wider recognition of the complexity of conflict and socio-political processes, much remains to be known about how people, countries, and institutions change during and in the aftermath of conflicts.
• Several areas look promising, and the authors discuss these in turn below.

3.1 Better data

• Evidence remains sparse, scattered, and largely based on isolated case studies.
• Comparable evidence across different conflict-affected contexts requires investment in appropriate methodological systems, as well as closer engagement between researchers, the international policy community, and local governments (including statistical offices).
• The research agendas proposed above involve close engagement with mechanisms and relationships that are not easy to map, analyse, and understand.
• Micro-level and household data can go a long way towards bridging the analytic gap between country-level data and event causality during and after conflict within local communities.
• National census data and other types of standardized household data collection can be used to understand localized impacts of conflict.

3.2 Better monitoring and evaluation

• Evaluating project outcomes in development programming is difficult even in settings not affected by conflict and violence.
• Field experiments and randomized control trials (RTCs) represent the current state of the art for policy and programme impact evaluation.
• Blum (2011) notes that, while progress has been made, many of the ‘low hanging fruit’ have been picked and now the peacebuilding evaluation field is having to address larger structural problems with effective evaluation.
• Three areas offer particular challenges: scale, weak results, and accountability between implementers.
• The DM&E for Peace consortium provides members with agreed-upon materials, processes, and strategies for evaluating peacebuilding and development programming.

3.3 Long-term and intergenerational impacts of conflict

• The impacts of conflict and violence are not only immediate but continue to affect multiple generations.
• These effects can be seen in how youth and women are affected by changes in economic, household stability, and human capital outcomes (Justino 2012).
• The physical risks, such as sexually transmitted infections, present direct risks to babies in utero, since access to quality medical care is limited.
• While there were significant long- and short-term impacts on boys exposed to the violence, girls were impacted in the short term but experienced less impact in their long-term educational attainment.

3.4 Linkages between agriculture, food security, and conflict

• As global markets for food become more interconnected and changes in the environment and climate impact farming and agriculture, the role of food security in conflict prevention will become increasingly important.
• As Stewart (1998) explains, conflict-affected economies and polities are far more complex than those that just rely on aid, and there are a variety of ways that food aid can actually exacerbate or lengthen a conflict.
• Van Weezel (2016) did a deeper analysis of food price changes and violence from 1990 to 2011 finding evidence that while rising food prices, particularly related to low-value-added primary products, did correspond with violence, food aid remained a relatively weak predictor of violence across models.
• While water access and scarcity are critical to supporting agricultural production, and policies need to be developed to support sustainable water use (Munir and Qureshi 2010), climate and water access can have surprising effects on the likelihood of conflict outbreak.
• Yet post-conflict settings also entail varied challenges related to the experience of conflict and displacement, differentiating these scenarios from ‘development as usual’ (Bozzoli and Brück 2009; Bozzoli et al. forthcoming; Brück and Schindler 2009).

3.5 Technology and peace

• Since the mid-2000s, the technology and peace agenda among donors, NGOs, and researchers has grown significantly (Bott and Young 2012).
• The field is quite new though, so there is still an emerging debate about how these new technologies affect localized conflict and peacebuilding, have potentially negative effects on democratic participation, and support hybrid forms of micro– macro peacebuilding (Tellidis and Kappler 2016).
• The Ushahidi project was innovative and compelling, drawing the interest of donors at a time when the push for localized data was increasing.
• Bailard’s (2015) analysis of organizational and collective action processes in organizing violence support Pierskalla and Hollenbach (2013), noting that mobile phones make it easier to organize collective violence between ethnic communities.
• Firchow and MacGinty (2016) demonstrated how mobile phones can be used to support local data collection on perceptions of stability and the risk of violence.

3.6 Linking micro and macro levels of analysis

• At the same time, local conflict processes have important implications for wider conflict processes, including the strength and authority of state and non-state groups, and the level of support they command among local populations.
• Bringing together these two perspectives is essential as the international outlook on security becomes increasingly complex.
• Some progress is starting to be made (see Balcells and Justino 2014).

3.7 The global costs of conflict

• The costs of conflict and violence impact civilians and institutions at a variety of levels, but calculating specific numbers for losses and costs due to conflict is challenging (Brück and de Groot 2013).
• The IEP uses a relatively straightforward method of accounting for a variety of economic and social costs related to conflict and violence annually, determining that in 2015 the global costs of violence were US$13.6 trillion in PPP.
• Nor does it allow for the identification of how these macro numbers impact local governance institutions or macroeconomic losses such as tax revenue.
• Abadie and Gardeazabal (2003) explore the costs in terms of gross domestic product (GDP) losses and firm stock performance in the Basque Country after the onset of terrorism there and in response to the potential for a peace agreement.
• The costs and losses associated with violent conflict have impacts on micro and macro social and institutional performance.

3.8 Beyond civil wars

• Conflict research has been dominated by the analysis of a restricted number of failed states riven by civil wars, mostly in Africa (see, for instance, Collier 2007).
• This research has been less useful in identifying the mechanisms that may explain why some conflict-affected countries have historically been able to successfully transition to peace and stability, while others remain trapped in cycles of violence and insecurity.
• Failed civil war-riven countries constitute only a minority of contexts where violence and conflict persist (World Bank 2011).
• These countries are places where social change is taking place at a fast pace but final outcomes in terms of peace and development remain unknown.
• A closer focus on these countries—or areas within countries—could potentially allow us to rigorously observe how violent conflict and institutional change interact to shape the complex transition of modern societies towards peace, prosperity, and stability.

3.9 Fragility

• Another area beyond more traditional definitions of conflict and violence is the concept of fragility.
• By encompassing environmental and geographic risks, along with more traditional indicators such as political stability and economic capacity, fragility can indicate where resources need to be directed pre-emptively to prevent social and political breakdowns that can lead to violence.
• One of the key goals of this report is to better understand which states are the most fragile and to assess the relative distribution of overseas development aid in light of that.
• The OECD’s fragile states analysis has been built on the World Bank’s annual integrated fragile states list (OECD n.d.), which started as the non-public Low Income Countries Under Stress list and turned into the publicly available Harmonized List of Fragile States.
• One of the problems is that increasing the level of complexity in a measurement scheme inevitably becomes less generally descriptive, ending up with the position that every state is fragile in different ways.

4 Final reflections

• The authors still have very limited knowledge about the lives of populations in areas of violence and conflict and interactions with local forms of (state and non-state) institutional change.
• Notably, the authors need to better acknowledge that the security of lives and livelihoods in contexts of enduring violent conflict depend on endogenous institutional factors linked to political and social distributions of power during and in the aftermath of violent conflicts.
• There is also a pressing need for better data collection and evaluation systems: rigorous evidence on conflict processes, how lives carry on, and the effectiveness of interventions in contexts of violence is scarce and unsystematic.
• One-third of all aid to developing countries in 2009 was directed to fragile and conflictaffected countries (OECD 2011).
• This understanding is important because it will shape how political and development interventions may support or fail to support local populations.

Full text

WIDER Working Paper 2017/178
Conflict and development
Recent research advances and future agendas
Tilman Brück,
1
Patricia Justino,
2
and Charles Patrick Martin-
Shields
3
October 2017

1
International Security and Development Center (ISDC), Berlin, Germany and Leibniz Institute of Vegetable and Ornamental
Crops (IGZ), Großbeeren, Germany, email: tilman.brueck@isd-center.org;
2
Institute of Development Studies (IDS), Brighton,
UK; and
3
George Mason University and International Security and Development Center (ISDC), Berlin, Germany.
This paper is commissioned for the upcoming UNU-WIDER 30
th
Anniversary Conference publication on ‘Mapping the Future of
Development Economics’, as part of the UNU-WIDER project on ‘Development policy and practice—competing paradigms and
approaches’.
Copyright © UNU-WIDER 2017
Information and requests: publications@wider.unu.edu
ISSN 1798-7237 ISBN 978-92-9256-404-9 https://doi.org/10.35188/UNU-WIDER/2017/404-9
Typescript prepared by Lesley Ellen.
The United Nations University World Institute for Development Economics Research provides economic analysis and policy
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Katajanokanlaituri 6 B, 00160 Helsinki, Finland
The views expressed in this paper are those of the author(s), and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Institute or the United
Nations University, nor the programme/project donors.
Abstract: We survey selected parts of the growing literature on the microeconomics of violent
conflict, identifying where academic research has started to establish stylized facts and where
methodological and knowledge gaps remain. We focus our review on the role of civilian agency in
conflict; on wartime institutions; and on the private sector in conflict. Future research requires
new and better sources of data on conflict and conflict impacts, including from household surveys
in conflict-affected areas. Impact evaluations can also be valuable sources of insights about how
conflict impacts on people and how peacebuilding and reconstruction can be improved. We also
see the need for much more detailed studies on the long-term impacts of conflict; on the linkages
between agriculture, food security, and conflict; on the role of technology for peace; and on the
micro–macro linkages of conflict, as well its macroeconomic costs. Finally, future research would
benefit from linking analysis of large-scale violent conflict with other forms of violence, instability,
fragility, and humanitarian crises.
Keywords: conflict, violence, war, fragility, peace, reconstruction
JEL classification: D74, F51, H56, O12, O43, Q34

1
1 Introduction
The last two decades have seen an explosion of research on the relationship between violent
conflict and economic development. Until the mid-1990s, research on violent conflict was largely
dominated by international relations approaches and methods, with limited interest among
development economists or development studies scholars—or indeed mainstream development
institutions. Interest in violent conflict among the development community started to change with
the realization that the group of countries that would not fulfil the Millennium Development Goals
by 2015 had one characteristic in common: they were affected by armed conflict. The 2011 World
Development Report on ‘Conflict, Security and Development’, published by the World Bank
(2011), firmly established armed conflict at the centre of development policy and research. At the
same time, the intractable development and security challenges in both Iraq and Afghanistan
helped persuade a larger audience that our knowledge base on conflict and development was weak
and that the jury was out on how best to achieve development and security in conflict and fragile
states.
Despite a slow start, research on the relationship between conflict and development has generated
hundreds of studies over the last two decades. But the focus of research has changed substantially
in terms of theoretical approaches, empirical methodologies, and use of different data. This paper
reflects on the main advances in conflict research over the last two decades and suggests a number
of future agendas.
2 Recent advances in conflict and development research
Recent research on conflict and development has generated a number of important advances,
including: (i) a shift from state to more micro levels of analysis, (ii) recognizing the importance of
civilian agency in conflict contexts, (iii) a focus on the role of wartime institutions, and (iv) a
stronger focus on the role of the private sector in conflict-affected contexts.
2.1 Shifting to the micro level
The first main advance has been a shift from state to micro levels of analysis. Research on violent
conflict during the 1980s and 1990s was largely focused on the security and capacity of states to
provide services and public goods and to maintain the rule of law. This research was very useful
in advancing understanding about global patterns that drive some types of conflict, but it was less
useful in uncovering mechanisms that may explain sub-national patterns of conflict, including
variation in types, forms, and consequences of violence, and variation in the consequences of
violent conflict across social groups and regions. Limited attention was also paid to individuals
beyond immediate humanitarian needs.
The recent focus has shifted from states to people and communities.
1
This has happened on both
sides of the equation: research now asks who engages in violence, as well as who is affected by
violence. As discussed in Justino et al. (2013, pp. 290), questions being asked include: ‘Who are
the people affected by violent conflict? How do they live? What do they do to secure lives and
1
See HiCN (n.d.) and MICROCON (n.d.).

2
livelihoods? What options do they have? What choices do they make? Why are they affected by
violence and how? How does violence change their options and choices?’
This new emphasis on people and on micro-level processes has generated a wealth of rigorous
evidence, data, and analysis on group, household and individual welfare and behaviour in conflict
settings, and the spatial differentiation of conflict patterns at the sub-national level (see Justino
2009, 2012; Balcells and Justino 2014). In particular, this research has shown that the legacies and
duration of violent conflict are closely interrelated with how people and groups behave, make
choices, and interact, and has driven a new policy focus on people-centred approaches to
development in conflict-affected settings.
2.2 Civilian agency in conflict contexts
The second related advance has been a greater emphasis on civilian agency. Although civilians
constitute the bulk of the victims of armed conflict, many build tremendous resilience in the face
of violence (Justino 2012, 2013). People living in areas of violent conflict carry on with their daily
lives, in many cases across generations and decades of conflict, and adapt to processes of conflict
and violence in order to survive. Some people succeed in ‘navigating’ the conflict, others do not
(Zetter and Verwimp 2011; Justino 2012). Their choices and behaviour (voluntary or involuntary),
in turn, shape dynamics of conflict on the ground including where to fight, with whom, and for
how long (Justino 2013; Arjona 2015), and set the stage for how interventions to build peace,
stability, and economic prosperity in conflict-affected contexts may succeed or fail (Autesserre
2010).
Recent research has also shown that, although violent conflict is associated with many adverse
outcomes for civilians, in some cases experiences of recruitment and victimization may result in
increased individual political and social participation and leadership once the war is over (Bellows
and Miguel 2009; Blattman 2009), and in stronger forms of altruism and social cooperation (Voors
et al. 2010). Although results are mixed, taken together this research suggests that civilian
experiences of violence beyond victimization are central to how social relations, markets, and
political structures are organized during and after violent conflict.
2.3 Wartime institutions
The third advance has been a better understanding of how institutional transformations during
conflict affect post-conflict processes. An emerging research agenda has argued that understanding
societies and economies affected by armed conflict is not possible without an in-depth
understanding of the nature of the violence and, importantly, the nature of the institutional changes
caused by it (Justino 2013, 2016b). Central to this research is the observation that violence is
endogenous to how institutions emerge and are sustained in conflict areas (Cramer 2006; Justino
2013). For a long time, social science theorized armed conflict as a departure from social order,
rather than as intrinsic to the creation and change of institutions. As a result, a large literature refers
to armed conflict as a symptom of ‘state collapse’ or ‘state failure’ (Zartman 1995; Milliken 2003;
Ghani and Lockhart 2008).
However, the collapse of state institutions is not always associated with the collapse of order
(Kalyvas et al. 2008). In reality, political actors occupy the space left by weak or absent state
institutions by building new institutions that advance war objectives. These are often violent, but
not everywhere nor at all times (Kalyvas et al. 2008; Mampilly 2011; Arjona 2015; Arjona et al.
2015). Examples of these actors include the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC),
the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), Hamas, Hezbolah, Taliban, and more recently ISIS.
These groups have in common the fact that their institutions are persistent and last even though

3
the conflict may be over. Recent research has developed new theoretical approaches and empirical
methods to understand these ‘wartime institutions’ (Mampilly 2011; Arjona 2015; Justino 2016b),
and has documented the implications of rebel institutions for the reintegration of ex-combatants
and war-affected civilians, state-civilian relations, and processes of state formation in the aftermath
of violent conflicts.
This research has important policy implications because acknowledging that conflict-affected
contexts are not blank slates rising from anarchy and disorder significantly affects the way we
understand the types of society that emerge in the post-conflict period. It explains why conflict,
violence, and instability persist in some countries, why in other settings violent conflict changes
into different forms of violence, criminality, and situations of ‘no peace, no war’, and why in some
countries peace and stability succeed, leading to democratic and inclusive societies (Justino 2013,
2016b).
2.4 The private sector
The role of the private sector in post-conflict development and peace durability is embedded at
both the local and national levels. Entrepreneurship can have stabilizing effects at the local level,
while large-scale investment and capital deepening can support institutional stabilization. Since the
late 1990s, the role of economic stabilization and investment in peacebuilding and stabilization has
been analysed in significant depth. What remains is a gap in the literature on local-level
entrepreneurship and firm behaviour in post-conflict settings, and the impact that
entrepreneurialism has on both peace and conflict duration (Brück et al. 2013). Entrepreneurs and
firms are tenacious, and show a capacity to adapt and survive during conflict and in the post-
conflict recovery period, which can have positive and negative effects on the evolution or conflict
and peace processes (Brück et al. 2013).
While the private sector can play a negative role in the prosecution of conflict, due to reliance on
networks with government and militant actors, it can also play a significant role in speeding up the
process of stabilization after conflicts end (Peschka et al. 2011). At a macro level, when conflicts
end and efforts are made to spur private sector growth, policies need to be oriented towards
establishing predictable regulatory processes, developing a credit market, stimulating foreign
investment, and deepening human capital (Kusago 2005). Many of these policy issues must be
addressed as an economic agenda during the implementation of peace processes, so that informal
economies and demobilized fighters can be transitioned into the peacetime economy (Nitzschke
and Studdard 2005). As private sector actors enter into post-conflict markets, there needs to be
awareness that the private sector may have played a role in the conflict and the ability to account
for risks associated with bringing a new commercial agenda into a fragile political environment
(Bray 2009). Well-defined corporate social responsibility, regulatory and legal frameworks, and
cooperation between government, international, and commercial actors can create a space in post-
conflict settings for sustainable investment, particularly in small and medium enterprises (Berdal
and Mousavizadeh 2010).
While the macro aspects of commercial behaviour in war-to-peace transitions have been well
researched, the microdynamics of entrepreneurship in conflict and post-conflict environments
remain under-surveyed. Entrepreneurship in conflict-affected and post-conflict settings is not
inherently good, as certain types of entrepreneurship can be destructive in nature (Desai et al.
2013). Without effective institutions there will be space for raiding resources, so non-cash
microcredit can be an effective way to provide resources while mitigating tendencies to raid
resources (Sanders and Weitzel 2013). Even when firms can be established, the intensity of conflict
will have an impact on the depth of human capital available to firms. As conflicts are more intense,
there is less human capital availability in the post-conflict period, leading to smaller firms and

Frequently asked questions

Q1. What are the contributions mentioned in the paper "Wider working paper 2017/178 - conflict and development: recent research advances and future agendas" ?

The last two decades have seen an explosion of research on the relationship between violent conflict and economic development this paper. 

Q2. What are the key factors to the development of a linked system of governance?

Improvements in stock performance, increased capital growth, and high levels of human capital are key to developing linked local and national systems of governance, so further research on the costs of conflict and violence remain crucial in the conflict and development spheres. 

Q3. What types of data can be used to understand localized impacts of conflict?

National census data and other types of standardized household data collection can be used to understand localized impacts of conflict. 

Q4. What is the role of the micro-level data in understanding the causal chains of conflict?

Understanding these causal chains is critical because conflict and violence have lateral impacts between communities, as well as vertical impacts on how the collective behaviour of communities and households shapes national institutions in post-conflict environments. 

Q5. What is the key challenge for a future research agenda on the complex institutional dynamics linking conflict,?

One key challenge for a future research agenda on the complex institutional dynamics linking conflict, violence, and development processes is the establishment of more rigorous knowledge of how the micro-level dynamics of conflict are related to macro-level social, economic, and political processes (Kalyvas et al. 2008). 

Q6. What is the recent example of a new technology used for conflict management?

The now-classic example of new technologybeing used for conflict management is the development of the Ushahidi mapping platform in Nairobi during the 2007–08 Kenyan election violence. 

Q7. What is the problem with the OECD’s fragile states analysis?

One of the problems is that increasing the level of complexity in a measurement scheme inevitably becomes less generally descriptive, ending up with the position that every state is fragile in different ways. 

Q8. What is the key challenge to implement good evaluation into institutional policy?

While evaluation is manageable at the project level, and many scientific techniques for project and impact evaluation exist, a key challenge remains to implement good evaluation into institutional policy. 

Q9. What are the main approaches to understanding the impact of conflict on household economic behaviour and living standards?

The World Bank’s Living Standards Measurement Surveys (LSMS) provide household-level data on quality of life and economic participation, as well as some conflict-specific questions, that can be used to understand the impactof conflict on household economic behaviour and living standards. 

Q10. What can be done to bridge the gap between country-level data and event causality during and?

Micro-level and household data can go a long way towards bridging the analytic gap between country-level data and event causality during and after conflict within local communities. 

Q11. What countries have recently emerged from long civil wars?

Examples of such countries include many of the ‘Arab Spring’ nations, most of Latin America and Asia and several African countries that have recently emerged from long civil wars, such as Mozambique, Angola, Sierra Leone, and Burundi, to mention a few. 

Q12. What is the main argument behind the emerging research agenda?

An emerging research agenda has argued that understanding societies and economies affected by armed conflict is not possible without an in-depth understanding of the nature of the violence and, importantly, the nature of the institutional changes caused by it (Justino 2013, 2016b). 

Q13. What are the examples of how to use data to improve the evaluation of humanitarian aid?

These examples show that micro-level surveys and data collection, especially when done as representative panels, can provide data that links the micro to macro levels in conflict analysis as well as providing reliable baseline data to improve peacebuilding and development evaluation systems. 

Q14. What is the second approach to collecting data from conflict-affected regions?

The second is the use of sub-national data collected through surveys and censuses that was not conflict-specific, and then analysing that data in conjunction with existing conflict event datasets. 

Q15. What is the way to understand the dynamics of conflict?

Building rigorous evidence on these complex relationships is a challenging but not impossible task given the recent improvements in data availability and in analytical qualitative, quantitative and experimental methods to better understand conflict dynamics at different levels of analysis. 

Q16. What could be the useful way to study the transition of modern societies?

A closer focus on these countries—or areas within countries—could potentially allow us to rigorously observe how violent conflict and institutional change interact to shape the complex transition of modern societies towards peace, prosperity, and stability.