Evaluating Conflict Interventions

Work Package Leader:
Prof. Tilman Brück – German Institute for Economic Research

Researcher:
Carlos Bozzoli – German Institute for Economic Research

Overview

This Work Package establishes a direct link between micro level analysis of conflict and international policy on conflict mediation, resolution and prevention by investigating individual, household and group-level data capturing international interventions in conflict and post-conflict environments. Interventions are defined to include measures by governments (including their legal, political and judiciary actors), external non-state actors and donors to help alleviate conflict.

The objectives of this Work Package are to:

  1. Evaluate policy interventions to avoid, end and overcome violent mass conflict and its harmful consequences which are aimed at individuals, households and groups using academically rigorous quantitative and qualitative methods and datasets;
  2. Improve our understanding of how to evaluate programme effectiveness in conflict situations while considering the specific challenges arising out of project evaluation under conflict conditions
  3. Propose specific measures of how to improve the evaluation of future European donor interventions in this field.

This work will address the gaps in the literature through four steps. First, it will make available existing datasets and collect relevant data in conjunction with aid agencies and non-governmental organisations. Second, the literature on programme evaluation will be extended to the case of micro level interventions in conflict zones to allow the valid isolation and estimation of programme effects. Third, the specific issues involved in analysing conflict interventions will be considered explicitly in these studies, such as the long-term tracing of displaced people affected by conflict, the micro level direct and indirect effects of demobilisation and the support and reintegration of forced migrants. Fourth, this work will integrate the perspectives of researchers and practitioners thus enhancing the multidisciplinary and international learning on successful policy interventions.

The Work Package builds on the insights of several related Work Packages, including those on concepts, data and methods, group mobilisation, integration, risk and coping strategies, gender, forced migration, poverty, health and governance. It will also be informed by an international legal perspective, and potential links with the EU Conflict Prevention Network will be explored.

Given that the nature of the material to be studied is not restricted (beyond being in a conflict-affected area or benefiting conflicted affected people), the data to be used and the policies to be studied will be drawn from case studies also examined elsewhere in MICROCON for other purposes. It will thus generate important intellectual and managerial synergies across the whole programme.