FollowSPIRe’s Profs. Jennifer Todd and Paul Walsh will be presenting their paper (with Lupa Ramadhani) titled “Patterns of Conflict in the Great Lakes Region” Thursday November 22nd from 13:00-14:00 in G317 Newman (Arts) Building, UCD Belfield.
Abstract
The African Great Lakes Region (GLR) has witnessed some of the most intense
violence and protracted conflict of the last half-century. There has been spiralling
and sometimes over-lapping conflict in Burundi, Rwanda, Uganda and the
Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) (hereinafter Zone 1 conflict states). Yet their
neighbours—Kenya, Malawi, Tanzania and Zambia (hereinafter Zone 2 peaceful
states)—have remained generally peaceful. This article asks what makes the
difference in conflict outcomes between these neighbouring states? It has one goal:
to identify a set of structural and historical factors (if any), that differentiate the zone
1 from the zone 2 states and which can explain the incidence of conflicts across
time and countries. We set out to document and estimate the impact of a common
set of structural factors that underpin the outbreak of wars in this region over the
past fifty years, while controlling for time and country specific effects.