Policy Research Reports

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Violence without Borders: The Internationalization of Crime and Conflict

(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2020-06-25) World Bank

Just like nearly every aspect of human experience, crime, civil conflict, and violence have become increasingly global. Around the world, civil wars, of which there are more today than at any time since the end of World War II, displace greater numbers of people ever further from their countries of origin. Transnational terrorism has reached a 50-year high, in terms of both its incidence and the number of reported fatalities. Cross-border criminal markets—illicit drugs, human trafficking, wildlife trade, and so forth—take a heavy toll on the many societies they affect. This Policy Research Report, The Internationalization of Crime, Conflict, and Violence, offers a unified framework to take stock of the theoretical and empirical literature on crime, conflict, and violence and to discuss how the international community organizes itself to address security as a regional and global public good. The increasingly global effects of crime and conflict require an equally global response to violence.
Making Politics Work for Development: Harnessing Transparency and Citizen Engagement

(Washington, DC, 2016-07-11) World Bank

Too often, even reform leaders in countries fail to adopt and implement policies that they know are necessary for sustained economic development. They are encumbered by adverse political incentives, running the risk of losing office should they try to do the right thing. When technically sound policies are selected on paper, implementation through the public system can run into perverse norms of behavior among public officials and citizens to extract private benefits from the public sector at the expense of the greater public interest. Making Politics Work for Development is about how to make politics work for economic development rather than against it. It focuses on research about two forces—citizens’ political engagement and transparency—that explain and hold the potential to improve political incentives and norms of behavior in the public sector. The research shows that the confluence of transparency and political engagement can be a driving force for countries to transition toward better functioning public sector institutions, starting with their own initial and contextual conditions. To harness the potential of these forces, policy actors should target transparency to nourish the quality of political engagement so that citizens can hold leaders accountable for the public goods needed for development.