Public Policy Theses and Dissertations

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Browsing Public Policy Theses and Dissertations by Subject "Africa"

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    Balancing Belligerents or Feeding the Beast: Transforming Conflict Traps
    (2016) Hayden, Nancy Kay; Orr, Robert; Steinbruner, John; Public Policy; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    Since the end of the Cold War, recurring civil conflicts have been the dominant form of violent armed conflict in the world, accounting for 70% of conflicts active between 2000-2013. Duration and intensity of episodes within recurring conflicts in Africa exhibit four behaviors characteristic of archetypal dynamic system structures. The overarching questions asked in this study are whether these patterns are robustly correlated with fundamental concepts of resiliency in dynamic systems that scale from micro-to macro levels; are they consistent with theoretical risk factors and causal mechanisms; and what are the policy implications. Econometric analysis and dynamic systems modeling of 36 conflicts in Africa between 1989 -2014 are combined with process tracing in a case study of Somalia to evaluate correlations between state characteristics, peace operations and foreign aid on the likelihood of observed conflict patterns, test hypothesized causal mechanisms across scales, and develop policy recommendations for increasing human security while decreasing resiliency of belligerents. Findings are that observed conflict patterns scale from micro to macro levels; are strongly correlated with state characteristics that proxy a mix of cooperative (e.g., gender equality) and coercive (e.g., security forces) conflict-balancing mechanisms; and are weakly correlated with UN and regional peace operations and humanitarian aid. Interactions between peace operations and aid interventions that effect conflict persistence at micro levels are not seen in macro level analysis, due to interdependent, micro-level feedback mechanisms, sequencing, and lagged effects. This study finds that the dynamic system structures associated with observed conflict patterns contain tipping points between balancing mechanisms at the interface of micro-macro level interactions that are determined as much by factors related to how intervention policies are designed and implemented, as what they are. Policy implications are that reducing risk of conflict persistence requires that peace operations and aid interventions (1) simultaneously increase transparency, promote inclusivity (with emphasis on gender equality), and empower local civilian involvement in accountability measures at the local levels; (2) build bridges to horizontally and vertically integrate across levels; and (3) pave pathways towards conflict transformation mechanisms and justice that scale from the individual, to community, regional, and national levels.
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    AN ESSAY ON THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF INDUSTRIAL POLICY IN ETHIOPIA
    (2018) Tolina, Eyob Tekalign; Crocker, David A; Destler, Mac M; Public Policy; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    In this dissertation, I present a political economy analysis of the post-1991 industrial policy (IP) in Ethiopia. In Chapter one, I set the context for the study and present the research methodology. In the second chapter, I present a comprehensive overview of the literature. After introducing key concepts and reviewing old and new debates on IP, I justify why a political economy framework is a promising way to analyze industrial policy. In Chapter three, I present the historical and current political and economic profile of Ethiopia. I emphasize Khan’s (2005) notion of a “political settlement” as a way of understanding the political economy of a nation in relation to its industrial policy outcomes. I also employ as a main analytic lens Whitfield et al.’s (2015) framework for the politics of industrial policy in Africa. This lens offers three conditions – mutual interest, pockets of efficiency and learning for productivity – as necessary for successful implementation of industrial policy. The Whitefield framework argues that the emergence of these three conditions is shaped by the type of clientelist (donor/client) political organizations that exist in a nation. As such, the model places strong emphasis on material incentives and constraints. In Chapters four and five, I test the relevance of this model to explain and evaluate Ethiopia’s IP. The analysis therein is divided into three politically significant time periods. The focus is to investigate the relations between the dominant clientelist political organization in each time period and the existence or absence of the three Whitfield conditions. The study shows that the Whitfield model neither adequately explains IP results nor guides Ethiopia toward better results. In a bid to establish a more credible and complete version of political economy, the study builds on and supplements the Whitfield model by defending an additional condition necessary for IP success, namely, the political and moral power of concerned citizens. Such an alternative approach I develop in Chapter six, which highlights the importance of such notions as fairness and equity, citizen rights, participatory institutions and civil society in the theory and practice of moral economy.