What are the difficult choices economists face in the pursuit of peace?
Professor Boyce outlines four basic dilemmas in the economics of peacebuilding. The first is the humanitarian dilemma: how to ensure that aid meant to relieve suffering does not have the unintended effect of perpetuating conflict. The second is corruption, which is sometimes seen as a cost of getting things done, but can fatally corrode state legitimacy, especially when it takes the form of “grand corruption” of high-level government officials. The third dilemma is how to handle legacies of external debt, maintaining access to credit without diverting scarce resources from other pressing post-conflict needs. As one way to address this dilemma, Boyce advocates for selective repudiation based on the doctrine of odious debt in international law. The final dilemma involves partition between the warring sides, which although often seen as a short-term solution can be a recipe for perpetual conflict in the long term. All four dilemmas force policy makers to confront trade-offs between short-run expediency and long-run impacts, trade-offs that conventional cost-benefit analysis is ill-suited to handle.
Learn more at [ Ссылка ]
Directed by Matthew Kulvicki
Produced by Nick Alpha
