Aid Under Fire: Development Projects and Civil Conflict Flashcards
Crost et al
existing research around aid is
mixed, there are different conclusions on the impact of aid
aid is a ___ force in conflicts
stabilizing
- sudden reductions in aid can cause violent conflict
US food aid promotes
civil conflict on average, through prolongation of the conflict
the consensus is that the effectiveness of aid is
heavily dependent on the nature of the aid that is being delivered, and the manner of implementation
what are the three conditions for aid
- aid spending should be small, conditional, secure, and informed
- engage in developmental expertise, aware of the situation
- train people to implement local service provision
what is the research question for Crost et al
What is causal effect of the KALAHI-CIDDS community driven development program (CDD) on civil conflicts deaths in the Philippines
hypothesis for crost et al
insurgents try to sabotage the program for political reasons, as a successful implementation will weaken their support from the population
significance of Crost et al
- important implications on how aid programs should be designed so as not to intensify conflict
- addressing the importance of the process of aid distribution in determining an improvement or worsening of the situation
what is the KALAHI-CIDDS program
- community driven development program in the Philippines, funded by the World Bank and implemented domestically by the Philippine government
the largest development program in the Philippines during its 2003-2008 period of implementation: more than 4000 villages in 184 municipalities across 42 provinces
four stages of the KALAHI-CIDSS program
- preprogram: 12 months before the start of social preparation
- social preparation phase: 6 months at the beginning of program
- remaining program period: 3 years after the social preparation phase
- entire program period: all three previous periodsa
what design does the crost et al paper use
regression discontinuity design: exploits an arbitrary poverty threshold used to assign eligibility for the program
what does the regression discontinuity design do
- compares conflict levels of municipalities around the arbitrary threshold of poverty for the CDD
- allows us to estimate the causal impact of the development program on conflict
- a municipality that is the poorest quartile of its province gets the program
- they are then ranked relative to the poverty cutoff for the CDD program
the effect of eligibility on participation for crost
- poor municipalities have higher probability to participate
- probability participation decreases sharply across the eligibility threshold
during the social prep phase what happens to the casualties / per month
rises before the CDD and the drops
robustness tests for continuity of observables across the threshold
under the identifying assumption of the RD estimator - that assignment close to the threshold is as good as random - the control variables do not change discontinuously across the threshold
four conclusions of crost et al
- the study provides evidence that a large scale community driven development program in the Philippines caused an increase in conflict casualties
- the effect was concentrated in the program’s early stages: before funds were disbursed and before eligible municipalities committed
- the increase in casualties was strongest among government forces suffering insurgent initiated attacks
- similar effects were observed in conflicts with both the communist New People’s Army, and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, while no observable impact on conflicts involving non-political armed criminal groups
key takeaway from crost
the results support the hypothesis that insurgents sabotaged the program to protect their political position and maintain popular support
