Salvaging Development: PostWar Reconstruction and Adjustments to Globalization

1
Salvaging Development Post-War Reconstruction
and Adjustments to Globalization 

• Francesco Strazzari and Reinoud Leenders
  University of Amsterdam

2
The World Bank in War and Post-War
Reconstruction

• World Bank Post-Conflict Unit 1997
• Colliers Economics of Civil War, Crime and
  Violence, 1999
• World Bank, Breaking the Conflict Trap Civil War
  and Development Policy, 2003.
• Paul Collier and Nicholas Sambanis (eds),
  Understanding Civil War, The World Bank, 2005 (2
  volumes).

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Collier-Hoeffler Model for Civil War Onset

• Not political social grievance per se leads to
  civil war, but, rather, for given levels of
  grievance, it is the opportunity to organize and
  finance a rebellion that determines if a civil
  war will occur or not. The determinants of such
  opportunity are mainly economic greed.

4
World Bank in post-war reconstruction

• Post-Conflict Fund, 1998
• International donor trust funds including
  Afghanistan, Kosovo, East Timor, Palestine, Iraq.

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Main Arguments

• The WBs interest and specialization in the
  economics of war and post-war reconstruction and
  indeed the interest in general by aid
  practitionersclosely relate to the general
  demise of development both as a
  sub-disciplinary study and a policy
  apparatussince the 1990s.
• The WBs interest in post-war reconstruction can
  be seen as an attempt at revival or reform of
  development and the external policy
  interventions prompted by it.
• The WB leaves intact the very flaws of
  development that underlie this notions
  intellectual bankruptcy and lack of credibility
  as an effective policy tool Development is
  reinvented not reconsidered.

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Moral and Strategic Imperatives

• ..the international community has the moral
  right and the practical duty to intervene to
  prevent and shorten conflicts.
• - Breaking the Conflict Trap

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The CH-model on Globalization Civil War

• Countries at higher risk of civil war are the
  least globalized as measured in terms of these
  countries openness to foreign trade and FDI.
• As globalization again measured in terms of
  foreign trade and FDIis viewed as fostering
  economic growth, a strong correlation between
  economic growth and political stability rules
  that, indirectly, globalization counters civil
  wars.
• It follows that policy should encourage
  globalization as preventive and a remedy to civil
  war.

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Post-War Reconstruction Repeating Developments
Flaws

• Spurious precision on the meaning of
  globalization formal versus informal economies

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Post-War Reconstruction Repeating Developments
Flaws A-historical, de-contextualized

• Three global resources going into rebels and
  militias
• extortion of natural resources
• Donations from diasporas
• Nature primary commodity exports and dependence
  on these.

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Post-War Reconstruction Repeating Developments
Flaws A-historical, de-contextualized

• Global opportunities, not causes
• International management and regulation financial
  markets.
• Curbing illegal trade in drugs, arms and natural
  resources.
• Cushioning international financial and economic
  volatility

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Development, Aid Conflict

• Aid can reinforce, exacerbate and prolong
  conflict because when international assistance is
  given in the context of a violent conflict, it
  becomes a part of that context and thus also of
  the conflict. (Anderson, Do No Harm. How Aid Can
  Support Peace or War, 1999)
• Development aid industry in pre-1994 Rwanda
  contributed to violence by bolstering patterns of
  exclusion (material and racism, oppression) and
  state actors benefiting from them without for a
  single moment reconsidering its own role to this
  effect. (Peter Uvin, Aiding Violence the
  Development Enterprise in Rwanda, 2000)
• IFIs own policies may have contributed to civil
  wars e.g. Sierra Leone, Serbia and Rwanda SAP
  and macro-economic stability policies,
  privatization fiscal austerity, education and
  health sector reform, financial shock 1998 Asian
  Crisis.
• Capitalist development creative destruction
  greed