GOVT 50.19
Development Under Fire
Course Description:
This course examines the recent emergence of foreign assistance as a tool of counterinsurgency and post-conflict reconciliation in countries as diverse as Afghanistan, Iraq, Colombia, Liberia, Pakistan, and the Philippines. The course has three broad purposes: (1) to introduce students to leading research on the motives and dynamics of violence in civil war settings, with a focus especially on the post-1945 era; (2) to develop an understanding of the multiple ways in which different actors - including militaries, rebel organizations (i.e. the Taliban), state agencies (i.e. USAID), non-governmental organizations (i.e. Doctors Without Borders), and international organizations such as the World Bank - have used aid in these environments, and how aid and violence intersect; and (3) to provide students with a grasp of the different approaches that have been used to evaluate aid in these settings, including randomized control trials, quasi-experiments, interviews and focus groups, and survey experiments.