Most violent conflicts since the turn of this century were in countries that had experienced an earlier violent conflict. How can we tell when a country is likely to remain stuck in a cycle of violence? What factors suggest it might be "ripe" for stabilizing and peace building?
This report, published on the twentieth anniversary of the founding of the Office of Transition Initiatives at the US Agency for International Development, considers what today's complexities imply for how conflicts and transition work might evolve in the future.
A New Approach to Assessing Support and Opposition across Disciplines
This report introduces a new assessment framework for legitimacy and illegitimacy that governments, businesses, and other organizations can use to better understand the sources and dynamics of support or opposition for any entity, policy, or program.
This report from the CSIS Americas Program provides a detailed look at the challenges the Colombian government confronts as it moves from providing security to developing rural areas that were previously conflict zones. In particular, the report examines such issues as remaining security needs; land tenure; needed infrastructure improvements; and ......
Can the United States prevent or end conflicts and protect its interests without using military force? Do U.S. civilian institutions have the right mix of support, funding, and capabilities to respond to major crises and political transitions? In July 2013, CSIS raised these questions before more than 200 policymakers and experts, with 22 speakers ......
Assessing Obstacles to Success in the Donor-Recipient Relationship
In development, stabilization, and peace building, donors increasingly recognize the importance of being sensitive to the local contexts of their efforts. Yet the use of "blueprints" remains widespread. Even when standard approaches are modified for particular aid partners, there often remains a poor fit between donor efforts and local conditions. ......
A New Framework, Applied to Afghanistan's Police Training Program
When recipients cannot absorb the aid and attention they are offered, the common response is "capacity building"-as if the source of the problem is the recipient's implementation capacity. In this report, Robert D. Lamb and Kathryn Mixon present the results of their research on the sources of absorptive capacity. They find that this sort of ......
A New Dataset of Political Protests, Conflicts, and Coups
Every three weeks, a major political crisis begins somewhere in the world. The United States intervenes in less than a fifth of them. But that is still a new U.S. intervention about every two months. And almost all of them are civilian interventions; less than a third involve the military. CSIS has released a new dataset of "potential transitions" ......
