Who researches the researchers?

In a standard class on research methods, you will learn about biases that the researcher can introduce into the research. Researchers, we are taught, sometimes unconsciously influence respondents to give answers that make for results that are convenient to them. At the same time, respondents may give different answers to a question depending on the age, gender, ethnicity or nationality etc. of the researcher

Does security imply safety? On the (lack of) correlation between different aspects of security

This paper investigates to what extent different aspects of security correlate. It distinguishes four concepts covered by the term ‘security’: technical safety, perceived safety, technical security and perceived security. It is shown that these concepts need not correlate conceptually. Furthermore, the paper shows empirically that these concepts correlate weakly in two cases. This has implications for policy and research. First, it leaves open the possibility that interventions targeting one aspect of security do not affect, or even adversely affect, another aspect of security: an expression of a security gap. Second, research is commonly motivated by individual-level arguments relating to safety, whilst relying on aggregate indicators more likely capturing security

Off the hook: can mobile phones help with statebuilding?

Lady Gaga thinks the telephone is pretty much a one-way street: “Call all you want, but there’s no one home—and you’re not gonna reach my telephone,” she sings, together with Beyoncé in the aptly-named song “Telephone”

Anouk Rigterink and Mareike Schomerus, “The World Development Report 2015: One step forward, one step back”

Moving Beyond the Rational, Returning to the Apolitica

Mareike Schomerus and Anouk Rigterink, “Off the hook: Can mobile phones help with statebuilding?”

Even though the phone stands for communication, it only works if both ends play along — which is a good way to describe the dilemma about mobile phones and politics

South Sudan's long crisis of justice: merging notions of socio-economic justice and criminal accountability

South Sudan’s peace agreements offer two versions of justice: The Comprehensive Peace Agreement includes justice as a description of a better future with more equality. The Agreement for the Resolution of the Conflict in the Republic of South Sudan focuses on justice as individual criminal accountability for war crimes. However, the South Sudanese demand for justice combines and goes beyond these two conceptions of justice. Using structured and openended interviews conducted in January 2014, the chapter argues that justice is used to describe holistic accountability. This means accountability is understood not as individual accountability for crimes, but additionally as holding leaders formally to account for failing to deliver socio-economic justice and equality, as evoked by the spirit of the CPA. It is a request of sorts to bring leaders to justice for their lack of collective social and economic responsibility in a system where elections do not function as a way to hold leaders to account

Essays on violent conflict in developing countries: causes and consequences

This thesis consists of three essays, on the causes and consequences of violent conflict. It focuses on two factors that are thought to play a role in violent conflict, natural resource abundance and the media. The thesis exploits quasi-experimental variation to investigate whether natural resources and violent conflict are related, and if so, through which mechanism. It finds that evidence from cross-country studies indicating that natural resources (as a single category) cause violent conflict is not as robust as popularly believed. Proxies for natural resource abundance used are potentially endogenous to conflict, and addressing this issue changes the results obtained radically. Agricultural resources are found to be negatively related to civil war onset. In the case of diamonds specifically, evidence is found that primary diamonds, but not secondary diamonds, are related to violence. Both results provide support for income (or opportunity cost) as mechanism connecting natural resources and violent conflict. Policy documents assert that media can play a state-building role in conflict situations. However, media could also induce anxiety, and there has been increasing interest in the role of anxiety in the formation of political attitudes. This thesis investigates the impact of intensity of exposure to radio broadcasts on fear of victimization and the impact of fear on political attitudes, in South Sudan. It concludes that individuals living in areas with better radio reception display a higher level of fear, and that anxious individuals are more likely to support a local militia and less likely to support the government army. The latter could be considered the opposite of state-building