CDDRL Publications

Violence in war must have a limit. Those who are not participating in the hostilities should be protected to prevent war from sinking into barbarity. Today, this is safeguarded by international humanitarian law (IHL), of which the cornerstones are the four Geneva Conventions of 1949 and its Additional Protocols.

Trumpist populism could easily linger longer than most people readily assume. This article defines populism and gives three reasons why we are seeing the rise of populist nationalism now, in the second half of the 2010s. Those reasons are economic, political, and cultural. It also addresses the future of populism at home and abroad.

This essay confronts the collision of two potential global threats: the outbreak of infectious pandemics and the outbreak and protraction of civil wars.

Abbas Milani argues how the 19 May 2017 presidential election offers a window into the painful predicament of a democracy-minded society

—demographically young, globally inclined, and social-media savvy—subordinated to an authoritarian polity. Read the article here.

This case looks at the predicament of a small nation burdened by Chinese debt, accumulated by infrastructure projects under the aegis of China’s One Belt One Road initiative. By 2016, the government of Sri Lanka owed China $8 billion (almost 10% of GDP) mainly from loans taken to construct a series of infrastructure projects, many of which proved commercially unviable. Most of these were approved by the previous government under President Rajapaksa. The Colombo Port City project was the grandest and most ambitious of them all.

This case presents the decision to build the Sopladora Hydroelectric Plant (487MW) in the Ecuadorian Amazon, with financing from the Eximbank of China. President Rafael Correa faces a difficult dilemma. On the one hand, Sopladora is a strategic infrastructure project for the country that will allow it to reduce imports of refined fuel and increase its energy security, while saving money in an economy without a monetary policy.

On March 25, 2014 Zurab Alasania became the newly appointed Head of NTKU (National TV Company of Ukraine) and faced the challenges of creating a public broadcasting institution. It was a period in Ukrainian history when the Revolution of Dignity had just taken place, the Crimea had been annexed, and the situation in the country was very unstable. Parliament announced presidential elections for May of 2014. The creation of an independent public broadcaster had been mandated by the Council of Europe but had stalled for 10 years.

Uganda has long been plagued by chronic power shortages. Determined to boost the country’s economic growth, Ugandan leaders have decided to build two large-scale hydropower plants at Karuma (600MW) and Isimba (183 MW). Irene Muloni, the head of the nation’s Ministry of Energy and Minerals Development (MEMD), has two options for financing and building the hydropower facilities: either to build the dams as independent power projects (IPPs), or to accept Chinese financing and contract with Chinese construction companies.

This paper examines why governments in underdeveloped countries systematically pursue policies that prevent long-term economic growth. Focusing on the design and implementation of Mexico's massive land redistribution program, we argue that governments do so to improve their chances of political survival. Mexico’s incumbent PRI regime gave peasants communal property under a restrictive and inefficient property rights regime.

When Mexican President Felipe Caldrón took office in December 2006 he declared a war on the nation’s drug traffic organizations (Ríos and Shirk, 2011). Violence escalated as criminal organizations became increasingly fragmented and disputed their territories (Killebrew and Bernal, 2010; Beittel, 2011).

The levels of violence in Mexico have dramatically increased in the last few years due to structural changes in the drug trafficking business. The increase in the number of drug trafficking organizations (DTOs) fighting over the control of territory and trafficking routes has resulted in a substantial increase in the rates of homicides and other crimes. This study evaluates the economic costs of drug-related violence.

Jóvenes con Porvenir is a public-funded program run by the government of Zapopan. This pioneering policy initiative was designed and implemented in response to the major social and economic challenges affecting young people. The program offers scholarships to young men and women not enrolled in school, so they can attend vocational training courses regardless of their employment status.

Poverty relief programs are shaped by politics. The particular design that social programs take is, to a large extent, determined by the existing institutional constraints and politicians' imperative to win elections. The "Political Logic of Poverty Relief" places elections and institutional design at the core of poverty alleviation. The authors develop a theory with applications to Mexico about how elections shape social programs aimed at aiding the poor.

This case follows the development of the Inga 3, the third hydroelectric plant to be built on the Inga River in the Democratic Republic of Congo.  The Inga 3, with a capacity of 3,000 MW, would provide clean energy to the continent and a next step for President Obama’s Power Africa Initiative.

The Allied occupation of Japan is remembered as the "good occupation." An American-led coalition successfully turned a militaristic enemy into a stable and democratic ally. Of course, the story was more complicated, but the occupation did forge one of the most enduring relationships in the postwar world. Recent events, from the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan to protests over American bases in Japan to increasingly aggressive territorial disputes between Asian nations over islands in the Pacific, have brought attention back to the subject of the occupation of Japan.

"What should states in the developing world do and how should they do it? How have states in the developing world addressed the challenges of promoting development, order, and inclusion? States in the developing world are supposed to build economies, control violence, and include the population. How they do so depends on historical origins and context as well as policy decisions.

Abstract

In light of the legal issues raised by the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) trial (April to June 2015) against the Lebanese Al-Jadeed television on charges of contempt of court and obstruction of justice, the present paper seeks to assess the state of freedom of expression in Lebanon and the role played by the Lebanese judiciary in defining this right and delineating its limits, especially when it clashes with another right—in this case the right to protect one’s dignity in general, and the dignity of the judicial body in specific.

Poverty relief programs are shaped by politics. The particular design that social programs take is, to a large extent, determined by the existing institutional constraints and politicians' imperative to win elections. The "Political Logic of Poverty Relief" places elections and institutional design at the core of poverty alleviation. The authors develop a theory with applications to Mexico about how elections shape social programs aimed at aiding the poor.

In this paper published by the International Journal of Educational Development, we investigate the impact of drug-related violence in Mexico on academic achievement. We use panel of elementary and lower secondary schools and locality-level firearm homicides from 2006 to 2011. We rely on school fixed-effects models to estimate the impact on math test scores of turf war exposure and turf war persistence (e.g. months of exposure) during the academic year. According to the results, both exposure and persistence of criminal violence reduces math test scores.

Guillermo López Suárez, the new head of El Salvador’s port authority, faces a dilemma: how to get the brand new La Unión port running. Plans made by the previous, right-wing government to find a private operator for the $187 million port had stalled in the National Assembly. In addition, a number of expensive technical problems had become clear over the course of the port’s construction. To make matters worse, the current administration faced opposition to privatization of the port from within its own party, which had radical Marxist elements.