In Pursuit of Development

Political violence and development — Patricia Justino

Episode Summary

Dan Banik speaks with Patricia Justino on the relationship between poverty and violent conflict, the political economy of war zones, and how reports on political violence are produced and disseminated on social media.

Episode Notes

People living in areas prone to, or affected by, conflict tend to suffer from many types of deprivation. Some scholars argue that conflict is an important driver of severe food crises and famines, and that undernutrition worsens in situations of prolonged conflicts and in countries and regions with weak institutional capacity. In recent years, Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan, South Sudan and Ethiopia are just some of the examples that have been used in the literature to illustrate the close linkages between social and political unrest on the one hand and poverty and hunger on the other.

But is there a clear-cut relationship between poverty and violent conflict? There appear to be numerous drivers of violence. These often include political, economic, social and environmental issues. While socio-economic inequalities can be a major cause of violence, other causes could include human rights abuses, perceived injustice, systemic corruption, and disagreements over the distribution of natural resources and who gets to benefit from such resources.

To discuss some of these issues, I am joined by Patricia Justino who is a development economist and a leading expert on political violence and development. She is the co-founder and co-director of the Households in Conflict Network and is currently a Senior Research Fellow at UNU-WIDER and Professorial Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) in Brighton, UK.

We discussed the relationship between poverty and violent conflict, the work of the World Food Programme which received the Nobel Peace Prize last year, and the political economy of war zones. We also discussed how the state or armed groups behave in predatory or conciliatory ways towards local populations, how civilians respond to these strategies, and how reports on political violence are produced and disseminated on social media.

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Episode Transcription

(Transcript prepared by Ingrid Ågren Høegh)

Justino We have very little evidence that those who join armed groups or engage in violence are the poorest. In fact, there's a lot of work done analysing the profiles of terrorist groups. It shows that some of these joiners are actually found amongst the most educated and better-off.

Theme music You are listening to In Pursuit of Development with Dan Banik.

Banik People living in areas prone to, or affected by, conflict tend to suffer from many types of deprivation. Some scholars argue that conflict is an important driver of severe food crises and famines, and that undernutrition worsens in situations of prolonged conflicts and in countries and regions with weak institutional capacity. In recent years, Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan, South Sudan and Ethiopia are just some of the examples that have been used in the literature to illustrate the close linkages between social and political unrest on the one hand and poverty and hunger on the other.

I hope you enjoy our conversation.

Banik It's great to have you on the show, Patricia. Welcome.

Justino Thank you, Dan. It's a pleasure to be here. Thank you for the invitation.

Banik Let me begin with a very broad question. This has to do with what we’ve been reading about and watching on TV of late, there's a lot of talk about conflict, and how maybe there is a relation between poverty and conflict. So, my question would be: is there one? How would you characterise the relationship between poverty and conflict? And I'm asking you this because it is often assumed that poverty breeds violence. But what is the empirical evidence on this relationship?

Justino There is a lot of media attention on this issue of poverty and breeding violence. And this all comes from the fact that most civil wars and civil conflict that we experience in the world today happen in low income countries. So that's just a statistical fact. Now obviously correlation is not causation. And to answer this question it's important to look at the levels of analysis. So, there is an association between the incidence of civil wars and low incomes at country level. Now the fact of the matter is that this relationship hides a lot of other variables that explain both poverty and civil wars, one of the most important being state capacity. So, it's not the case that poverty causes civil wars, it's just that it happens in countries that have a whole series of issues and problems that are associated also with poverty. Then, it's also important to look at the micro level, at the level of people, and there's quite a lot of media headlines about low income people being more likely to engage in violence and there's a lot of discussions around these issues. But actually, you have very little evidence that those who join armed groups or engage in violence are the poorest. In fact, there's a lot of work done analysing the profiles of terrorist groups. It shows that some of these joiners are actually found amongst the most educated and better-off. It's very rare the poorest of the poor engage in this type of violent conflict and engage in these types of groups, or even in other forms of violence such as protests or riots. So, there's all this confusion basically.

Banik So Patricia, returning to this relationship between violent conflict and a relationship between violent conflict and low-income countries: so, then it is less about poverty and more about weak institutions?

Justino At the country-level, yes. It is about lack of basic institutions, lack of a social contract, lack of governments that function in a way that sort of includes most of the population in a way that people feel secure and protected and their needs taken care of. Yes, that's pretty much what we're talking about.

Banik But you can also have countries that have weak institutions but that doesn't necessarily lead to conflict.

Justino No, there are more complicated things happening. That's correct. There are countries that are poor and don't necessarily see civil wars or very violent forms of conflict. Other things come into the situation to do with say the design of these institutions, issues around different ethnic groups and how power is shared in different situations, the intervention of external countries supporting one group or the other, how elections take place, who has access to what kind of forms of power and resources. It becomes really complicated. But at the heart of it is the strength and the design of institutions.

Banik It's not just the poor but also the non-poor or wealthier groups in society that could lose a lot from war or conflict, but it is also interesting from your work that these same wealthy people may also be best placed to protect themselves from the impacts of conflicts that the poor are not able to do. Can you elaborate on that relationship? There may be many groups affected by conflict and some are perhaps more able to address the adverse effects better and cope better than others, right?

Justino That's right. This is probably from a paper I published some years back in the Journal of Peace Research, where I make the point that it's important to think about the effects of conflict in terms of economic aspects and physical security. And we observe often - I should say first that no matter what happens, conflict is a devastating thing to happen to anyone, no matter where you are, once you get caught in violence, your life will suffer dramatically. Now the point I make is that there is also a trade-off between economic vulnerability to conflict and physical vulnerability to conflict. And the poorest of the poor probably are vulnerable to both levels - are vulnerable to the effects of violence and to the economic factors. Those which are wealthier are able to protect themselves, possibly in a physical sense, due to a variety of reasons, private security guards, can establish alliances, and so forth, and can also protect themselves economically. Now the interesting thing that we found in some work that we've done in a number of countries, is those that have assets and wealth are also more likely to be the targets of armed groups. And this is because they have both physical assets that are important to the groups, but they also might have the connections and the political networks that might be important to armed groups. So, they are quite vulnerable. Like we found in the case of Rwanda during the genocide, that households that had visible assets, cattle for instance, were quite vulnerable to being targeted, and it's found in many other cases that households get targeted because they have food crops that are needed, they have assets that are needed by the groups. So, it's not so straightforward and those that have these positions, more wealthy positions or have access to networks that are valuable to armed groups, may also be targets of selective violence. It's important to make this distinction I feel.

Banik Maybe if I was rich and had visible assets in some of these areas, I suppose I would do my best to hide them and make myself more invisible, if that is possible. So, I'm wondering in your own work, did you find any patterns or coping strategies that the wealthier sections adopted in these situations? One would be perhaps aligning yourselves with one of the warring groups or one warlord and thereby getting protection, but would another strategy be to just hide your assets as much as possible?

Justino Well we saw in the case of Burundi that people started killing their cattle in order to protect themselves and their families. Those that have movable assets are probably in a better situation because they can be hidden more easily, or they can be moved abroad or moved elsewhere. Those that are dependent on land have more difficulties in doing so because their land is their source of wealth, so that's more difficult. In these situations, it's more likely they either get targeted by violence or alliances will be established. And we've seen this happen in many conflicts in Latin America where alliances between landowners and armed groups are not uncommon.

Banik Great, we'll return to that slightly later in the conversation. I just want to move on to this relationship between food security and armed conflict, which has of course received new attention given the Nobel Peace Prize this year to the World Food Programme, and there's a lot of interest now, not just at the UN agency level but also elsewhere. A lot of people are arguing an increase in global food insecurity is linked to violent conflicts, climate change, all kinds of dissatisfaction on the ground, with inequalities of various kinds, it could be gender inequality, income inequality, and so there is this kind of narrative being promoted that improving food security is important because this would help national governments to better cope and recover from conflicts. So, what is the empirical evidence on food security and armed conflict? Does it go both ways or is it a one-way relationship?

Justino That's again a complex issue. It works a little bit like poverty. Conflicts do cause food insecurity, especially because in several cases destruction of crops and burning of fields are used by armed groups as ways of controlling territories, displacing populations - it's used as a weapon of war. Darfur is an example where this was used quite effectively. In terms of food insecurity in causing conflict, things are a little bit more subtle. Again, those that suffer from hunger and so forth are likely to join very actively in forms of conflict, but there is some evidence that it works in different ways. There's now a lot of research done amongst ex-combatants, asking why the people joined various armed groups, and one of the reasons given is economic security, is being able to feed their families, being able to access that land, or whatever is needed to keep the family surviving. Then there is some evidence that increases in food prices are triggers of various forms of violence and research was done during the 2008 Financial Crisis and associated spikes in food prices, which led to rioting in many parts of the world. So, there are all these different mechanisms whereby the two will be linked. What hasn't been answered, and I think the WFP for instance are doing great work in that area, is if we improve food security, are we going to see less conflict? I don’t think that's been very well answered yet. Although it certainly won’t harm to ensure that famines and hunger are not happening at the same time as conflicts are happening.

Banik There's been this kind of criticism in some quarters that one really has to move beyond humanitarian relief to much more long-term development perspectives. And I suppose you could make that argument also in relation to what you just said about improving food security and the relationship that has with preventing conflicts. So, do you see that kind of criticism resonating in the literature in terms of what one could do to, say, improve food security in a long term perspective, not just short term, and maybe addressing the long term causes would perhaps promote more peace?

Justino We shouldn't forget that humanitarian organisations are needed. And needed for what they do. Handing out food and short-term measures are necessary for people that will die in the next week or so if this is not done. So, this work must continue. It must be well-funded, because at present it is not. And it needs to be there, and humanitarian organisations need to have access to civilian populations and all of that. Institutions like the WFP are also experimenting with other instruments like cash transfers being very popular now, and sort of playing a role in this gap, between humanitarian and development. It's very popular now to talk about this divide. And I guess these cash transfers, handing out people some initial capital, maybe to start their business, maybe to ensure kids go to school, whatever it is people use it for, might be important. I think evaluations are still being done about whether these programs really work in humanitarian settings. So, there's still a lot to be understood, but certainly more coordination between the so-called humanitarian organisations and the more development organisations is definitely a good thing to aim for. We've been talking about this for quite a few decades, about how best to ensure coordination, and it's not that easy. For people who are economically secure, will be less likely to join armed groups, but will also be capable of coping with violence.

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Banik What would be the best in terms of international humanitarian assistance in some of these areas that are experiencing conflict? Because the WFP highlights its work in conflict areas and makes that link between food security or insecurity and conflict. And I’m wondering in relation to say some of the literature I was reading, there was this focus on addressing the challenges of reaching people that are food insecure in high intense conflict areas, that apparently that is really a big problem for UN agencies like the WFP, but also for others. And you’re right in terms of the use of technology and I've been reading a little about how cash transfers are increasingly used. But, are there other strategies you think that the international organisations working in development and trying to promote food security, should they be adopting other types of policy interventions to address say not just food security but also the different priorities of women and men in relation to food security.

Justino There is some evidence that employment programs may also have a role to play. Especially in ensuring smooth transition of young people from school to employment, might have a role to play. Again, this is all about sort of reducing the opportunity costs of joining an armed group. This is what these programs are about. There’s also some evidence that improving education is definitely an important part of the story. But this is still based on case studies here and there, small samples, so it would be good to know more about these issues. But agencies are experimenting with all these ways of getting at the root causes of conflict from various different angles and at the micro level, like you just mentioned, they've been going through ways of ensuring wages, ensuring proper work, ensuring low levels of inequality, including gender inequality, all those policies are important. Now they cost, right, there is a financial cost to this, and from what I understand a lot of these agencies including the WFP do work with very limited budgets. So, there is also that side of things. Learning what works in order to become more effective, and also using scarce resources in the best possible way to ensure that people are safe.

Banik Let’s move on to another related aspect, in relation to say economic activity in war zones. And I’m particularly interested in better understanding say the role of different types of institutions. It could be whatever form of government or party that is in power, but it could also be other types of groupings. And what I find really interesting in some of your work, is how you highlight the fact that even in war zones, many aspects of life, like activities like trading or farming and even schooling, activities continue in conflict zones, even though some of these may end up becoming perhaps more informal, and the ability of whoever is in power to extract say taxes is limited, and households may also move into other types of safer areas or activities, growing more food crops than cash crops, so there are all of these things happening. So, I'm just interested in better understanding the fact that although state institutions may weaken, given the spread of violence, there are many other actors that end up occupying these governance spaces. So, my question is, how do you see governance taking place? It's not like there’s a total absence of the role of the state. There are all kinds of other mechanisms and other actors actively trying to fill, perhaps, that void.

Justino That's an excellent question. And it's the areas of research I've been working the most the last five years or so. One thing that's always puzzled me, and I still don't have an answer to this, maybe some of your listeners will know, is, to this date, I still haven’t found an accurate measure of how many people live in conflict zones. We measure numbers of displaced people, refugees, we measure a variety of things to do with conflict areas, but I've never found the number of how many people live in conflict zones, and I find that very interesting. Because if you actually do work in these areas, fieldwork, the first thing you notice is people are there and they carry on with their lives. And under difficult situations of course, some of these areas are really horrendous to live in, but people somehow carry on living, and adapt and do many things, forms of subsistence agriculture, many things happen in conflict. And at the same time, another thing that we observe immediately is that these are not exactly areas of anarchy. The media always have this mental idea of a conflict zone being areas under fire and anarchy and disorder, but particularly in the conflicts that are the most difficult to tackle, and the most long lasting ones, what you see is precisely what you said, Dan, is the state might not be there, but other political actors have taken all these functions of governing. And in some cases, we see armed groups providing schools and health centres and providing justice, Naxalite groups in India are known for their courts, "people's courts" they're called. We know that in Sri Lanka, the LTTE used to be very involved in provision of education and healthcare. The FARC in Colombia involved in a variety of public goods provision as well. And this keeps happening. And one interesting thing that we observe is the more effective these forms of arrangements are, the longer the conflict tends to last.

Banik Is that because other actors end up becoming more legitimate, so people feel that certain services are being provided so they don't really miss the former state?

Justino Well it's just what happens, authority in many of these areas is fragmented, so this idea of the state providing public goods disappears because the state is being contested by a variety of these groups. And we somehow have this mental picture that the state is the good guy and the rebel groups are the bad guys, but there is often a reason why the state or the incumbent government is being contested. Also, this is not to say that these groups are benevolent, they're not, it's all being done under the threat of violence. But it just makes common sense that if you're an armed group that wants to establish control over a certain territory, it's to your interest to have civilians on your side. And it's in your interest to create certain order in those areas because then you can grow your institutions, you can show that you have the ability to govern. So, it actually makes sense as a war strategy that armed groups do establish these forms of order and public goods provision, and in some cases, we see the provision of quasi states or parallel states.

Banik Patricia, what about the fact that, aside from the political institutions, the market and social interactions that continue to operate even when state institutions are absent or political authority fragmented. And I’m particularly interested in understanding the role of firms, and from what I read in the literature, that households tend to get a lot more attention than how firms operate, and where markets are actually functioning to some extent. So, what is the role of firms and the market? How do they actually work in these conflict settings?

Justino In areas where order has been established, markets will continue operating and they function. Also, in conflict areas, this war economy starts thriving, right, because armed groups need to access financial resources - populations need to be fed, and therefore there is a very sophisticated war economy in these areas whereby armed groups will tax local populations in exchange for the provision of public goods. Firms continue to operate. There's very little work done around that area where we certainly know that in conflict, business and alliances to armed groups are really important because that's how armed groups are financed. But also, we have the more mundane things of people still have to trade and life needs to carry on at that level. So, you have all these levels at which firms and businesses operate from the very micro-family-run businesses to the sort of more national business interest with links to international markets. And it has to do with the functioning of war economies. And in some cases, this can be very effectively done and maintaining these conflicts as well, like Somalia.

Banik So, what about the behaviours of the states or other groups. How do they behave in these situations? You said earlier that of course we can't assume that some of these non-state actors are benevolent, but they do behave in different types of ways. It could be predatory, it could be conciliatory, and in the literature there’s this kind of focus on different types of factors that determine the kind of behaviour of say the state or armed groups. Could be to raise taxes, to raise revenue, to exercise authority, to control the territory, but also you want some sort of goodwill from the local people and you may want some information from the locals, so information gathering is crucial. And I've read about Weinstein's argument that armed group behaviour is often shaped by initial endowments, so I was wondering if you could say a bit more about that? That if you have access to external finance, then you may be more predatory, and if you do need local income then you might want to be nicer to the local population.

Justino There's definitely some truth in that. Especially the sort of civil wars that emerged from the Cold War sort of indicate that's the case. The groups with strong international backing may not have the interest of the populations. On the other hand, you also saw in many areas the more guerrilla type groups which rely on local populations for their financing. So, in many places you observe that the more need armed groups have of civilians, the less likely they are to exert violence over the groups that they control. And this idea of control of territory, seems to be an important factor because it also seems that the stronger the control of the armed groups have over certain territories, the less likely that we observe extreme levels of violence in those areas. This is also for strategic reasons. Because these armed groups may be thinking about taking over the role of the government in the future, then these are their constituents. And also keeping a certain order facilitates the collection of taxes, facilitates the use of labour, so that makes perfect sense. But this is not just to do with external finances versus local finances. It also has to do with the strategic objective of the groups. There are groups that have short term economic interests at heart, are less likely to take this into consideration. Groups that really want to establish a long term relation with the population, possibly in order to secede from the existing country, or take over the government, will probably take a more or less extreme violent approach to how to deal with civilian populations. So, there are several factors that come into play.

Banik I was just thinking about the LTTE when you mentioned this earlier, I may be wrong, I haven’t done any research on it, I don’t know if you have, but from the little that I know, they seemed to have received considerable remittances and money from abroad for the diaspora abroad, from the Tamil diaspora, and they were also perhaps promoting maybe a long term development agenda. Does the LTTE fit into this kind of analysis?

Justino Yes, the LTTE, I've never done a direct analysis of Sri Lanka myself, but there’s great work looking at these forms of rebel governance in many parts of the world and the LTTE is a classic example, where providing public services to the population was part of the strategic objective of the group. Because, fundamentally they wanted to govern. So that is a very classic example of an armed group that set out to govern from the outset. But we also see Hezbollah and Hamas have similar objectives as well and are very efficient. Or even the Taliban in some places are very efficient of keeping control over those territories by providing public goods in exchange for support from the population, perceptions of legitimacy, keep things at a certain political and social order.

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Banik So we have a situation in many of these conflict areas, you have the state or non-state actors involved, you have market forces operating, and then you have some groups providing services, some perhaps behaving in very predatory ways , so I'm wondering how do civilians then respond to these strategies by these various groups and what makes say a household decide to stay or to leave that conflict zone? Is it the economic vulnerability aspect that if you're more vulnerable then you leave, and you stay perhaps if the armed groups provide some sort of protection against violence? What determines these household decisions in terms of leaving or staying?

Justino That's a good question. The other thing that's quite fascinating about these settings - and we're starting a new project on the institutional legacies of conflict - but one of the things we look at is civilians exercising agency in areas of conflict. We have this idea of civilians being the victims of conflict, which is correct, and they suffer quite a lot from violence and acts by different armed groups, but they also exercise quite a substantial amount of agency that probably has been underestimated. There is the story I mentioned before of people getting on with their lives and making decisions that will allow them to do this. From supporting the armed groups, to joining, to tolerating, to keeping their heads down, all these forms of behaviour are forms of adaptation to extreme situations. we see groups of communities that actually rebel against armed groups, for instance in Colombia, of communities that were able to resist the arrival of armed groups and negotiate the terms of their engagement. So, there is some agency. Obviously, some people have no say in the matter, they get killed or displaced but, in their cases, it also depends. In some cases, civilians that are of interest to those groups, may want to establish alliances, and some communities simply support those groups over the incumbent government for whatever reason: ideology, political, economic. So, people make these very complex decisions in their daily lives. and the interesting thing is it doesn’t have to be the same throughout. You see some communities that establish alliances with armed groups, but then the political situation changes... This give and take between civilians and armed groups is one of the big unknown areas in research on conflict. And we sort of have now a pretty good idea of how armed groups and state governments interact. We also understand how states and citizen relations operate. This area of how armed groups and civilians establish this sort of economic and political way of living together is still a bit of unknown, but we definitely see these complex relationships taking place. That’s why I said before it’s very difficult to then make judgements about who are the good guys and who are the bad guys.

Banik In your work, it is fascinating to see how important role labour unions and peasant associations have played in Colombia, for instance, and many of the decisions that households are faced with is determined by the ability they have to resist certain actors. Could you provide us with more information about these specific roles, that for instance women's groups, have played in Colombia, labour unions, peasant associations, what is it that they have done? Is it the long history of having been there in a community, their social capital networks that have been built around these unions, these associations that enable citizens to resist more? Maybe these unions and associations are trusted more than the new actors? Could you elaborate on that please?

Justino It's a mix of all these issues, so we can't generalize to say because in the case of Colombia there were trade unions that supported different armed groups, there were trade unions that resisted, same with peasant associations, with other community associations. Work has shown that if we are going to take some kind of generalisation from this form of relationships, it’s that communities that start off with very strong institutions, ability to coordinate, to take care of their business and organise themselves, will more strongly oppose armed groups. And they have capacity to negotiate with these groups. But again, there are also cases where communities happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and they do get attached. But if we're going to think through what current evidence tells us about this generalisation, probably it is true that communities that start off with strong identities and institutions, will probably resist, unless there is a reason why they would outright support these groups. And in that case, it probably is for ideological reasons. But again, now we’re entering a territory where this is probably the most active area of research in conflict analysis at the moment, so we don’t really have statements to make about these issues. But we're learning more and more, especially as more research is being done. This is not easy work, as you probably realise. Getting into these spaces and conducting research is hard work. But we're starting to get a handle about how people behave in these circumstances.

Banik Another area of work that you've done that fascinates me is the role of the media in some of these conflict settings. And I'm thinking of the more recent conflict, the ongoing conflict between the federal forces in Ethiopia and the TPLF in Tigray. And I was reading a news report, and it turns out that many Ethiopians rely on social media to get information, and some of these social media accounts are of course really biased, you don’t really get a balanced picture, and in the final episode of Season 1 of this podcast, I was speaking to an Ethiopia expert, and he was telling me about all the trolls and threats that he receives on social media. So, the media is not just the traditional media, but social media is increasingly playing a role in these conflict settings that may amplify certain messages, however true or false they may be. I wanted to go back to your work comparing the so-called old and new media, and I think you did some work in Kenya on this, so what is it that you found? What are the interesting dimensions in terms of the role of the media in these kinds of conflict settings?

Justino Yes, this is some work we did in Kenya. So, we assumed that violence would rise in the period before the elections, which did happen, so we set up a system. And this is work done with colleagues, and we set up a system of monitoring violent events. And we took the opportunity then to make that comparison. Can we get better information from social media, Twitter, or do we carry on using traditional media sources like newspapers, in order to understand how violence spreads, and so forth? This was just before the elections took place. Then there was a second round of elections, so we carried on having the systems in place. I completely agree with you that social media is playing a stronger and stronger role in disseminating all sorts of messages in conflict areas, and every armed group of any standing has a social media platform of sorts, so this gets played out in the public eye. But in the case of Kenya, we found that while Twitter gave us an immediate sense of what was happening, there were some strong biases. Obviously, people that have access to internet will be using it. Generally urban more educated populations. And we could see they were capturing large events. On the other hand, we did the same exercises in newspapers, and whereas that takes longer to understand what’s happening, the types of information that we get is wider. So, we get information from rural areas, also from people who may not have internet access, also from smaller events that may not make social media, so there are all these trade-offs. So, Twitter seems to be very good at capturing the younger and more educated and urban population than other forms of traditional media.

Banik Some media, of course, I understand it could be more of a middle class elite tool, that is used, but what has fascinated me when I have been in Asia, but also in sub-Saharan Africa, is the widespread use of WhatsApp, and all these data plans that people have now, that give you unlimited access to data, and what I’ve noticed is there are all kinds of viral videos that are shared. And it’s not that you agree with it, but you still share it because it’s sensational. And in many ways, this is similar to the kind of fake news that is often shared in much more developed country settings, where perhaps one is trapped in an echo chamber. How do you see that playing out, the role of these kinds of new media in terms of perhaps exacerbating or worsening situations on the ground by spreading rumours? This really is a big problem. And going back to the Ethiopia conflict, we see the very active dependency on social media for information on the conflict.

Justino Yes, absolutely, I agree. The social media platforms allow amplifying all sorts of messages from both sides and spreading really quickly and getting people to react. But actually last week, I attended a conference where there was a really interesting project by the Paris School of Economics, looking at the other side how the use of social media actually has a strong influence on what traditional media like TV news are likely to show. And if I remember correctly, they were looking at the Israeli-Palestine conflict, and I think the result was that the use of social media, certain types actually increase the likelihood of TV stations in the US to show more news about the plight of civilians in the conflict, as opposed to focusing on political actors or on the government side of things. The focus would be on civilians. So, I think this is again one of these complex situations, where you can see both things. You can see the social media amplifying rumours, distorted informational, etc. But also, then being used to mobilise people, communities, around issues that matter. Difficult to disentangle, but certainly something that is becoming much more important and needs to be understood very well. I haven’t seen any research done on the impact of social media on the spread of conflict, but I'm sure this will come very soon.

Banik My final question to you is: how do you see the research agenda in the near future? What are the interesting issues that you and your colleagues in say the Households in Conflict Network are going to pursue? And whether you have any examples of innovative research methods that can be used to better understand how people make decisions in conflict settings? And I’m asking this also from a personal interest point, now that we are all stuck because of the pandemic and we can’t travel, I’ve been thinking about all kinds of ways in which I could still use my contacts and other techniques to get empirical evidence. So, any final thoughts on research agendas in relation to the microeconomics of violent conflicts, but also the methods involved?

Justino In terms of topics, this idea of the formation of institutions in areas of conflict and their implications is really important. And more and more research is starting at that level. Understanding how communities are organised, how different institutions are formed and designed. The other area we're still grappling with is the long-term effects of these conflicts. And the long-term effects of these conflicts are important to understand. There is an argument going on about whether conflicts trigger development in reverse, like the example of Europe emerging from various wars, formations of nation-states in Europe out of wars, are we going to observe that in modern civil wars? All these really complex questions about the long-term is definitely an important area of research. Other areas like methods of reaching hard to get populations, lots of researchers are experimenting with mobile phone technologies, with satellite information to understand conflict areas, that's going to become more and more important, the Covid pandemic is probably going to accelerate that, but this already started way before, because to understand areas there is a big danger associated with doing research and fieldwork in conflict areas, there’s always a danger that areas in conflict will never be researched or will be researched only by a small number of people. So, using technology to understand that will be an area of interest to many people. And then you mentioned before the role of the media. I think this is going to become a big issue, and in the same way that fighting has become more complex, the use of drones, technology to target various groups, institutions and so forth, also the use of various media to mobilise population groups, communities, to spread information is going to become an important area of research.

Banik Patricia, it was great to speak to you. Thank you so much for coming on my show.

Justino It was a great pleasure, Dan. And thank you for the invitation. It's been nice talking with you.

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Thank you for listening to In Pursuit of Development with Professor Dan Banik from the University of Oslo’s Centre for Development and the Environment. Please email your questions, comments and suggestions to inpursuitofdevelopment@gmail.com.