- Convenor:
-
Heba Elsahn
(University College Dublin)
Send message to Convenor
- Chair:
-
Dr. Maksym Skrypnyk
(University College Dublin)
- Discussants:
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Elisa D’Amico
(University College Dublin)
Eman Abboud (Trinity College Dublin)
- Format:
- Paper panel
- Stream:
- Economics of development: Finance, trade and livelihoods
Short Abstract
This panel explores the budgetary politics of conflict, crisis, and post-conflict environments; examining how financial decisions operate as instruments of power. This focus on fiscal strategy offers a new framework for reimagining development in an era of geopolitical flux.
Description
As the global balance of power shifts, nations are recalibrating their financial tactics to navigate emerging challenges. This recalibration brings forward the inherently political nature of financial decisions, particularly in conflict and crisis environments. Beyond their technical functions, budgets and financial flows serve as important instruments for projecting influence, managing dissent, and negotiating social order. However, the specific strategies through which fiscal allocations become contested instruments of power remain largely under-examined, leaving a gap in our understanding of their impact on global dynamics.
This panel invites academic and practitioner papers that explore the political dimensions of financial decisions in conflict, crisis, and post-conflict environments. We welcome submissions that feature, inter alia, the state’s fiscal response to civil conflict; the political economy of financing and implementing peace agreements; the strategic use of development assistance as a foreign policy instrument; the role of international financial institutions in shaping post-conflict governance; and the ways national budgets become sites of political contestation between a range of domestic and international actors.
We welcome contributions from researchers at all career stages to ensure a diverse and inclusive dialogue. By analyzing government spending, the panel will present how major shifts in global politics have real-world consequences, offering a new perspective for reimagining development in an era of systemic uncertainty.
Accepted papers
Paper short abstract
This paper analyzes how Gulf donors (Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE) use food aid. It argues their allocations are driven by a range of foreign policy interests, humanitarian and otherwise. By delinking aid from conditionality, they challenge the Western model and reflect shifting geopolitics.
Paper long abstract
For decades, the allocation of international food aid has been dominated by OECD donors, guided by a set of norms rooted in the Western liberal paradigm. However, the rise of alternative donors, particularly the Gulf states, is introducing strategic logics and motivations that are influencing international development. This paper investigates the determinants of food aid from these new actors, asking: Are the Gulf donors responding primarily to recipient need, or are their allocations better explained by strategic and commercial interests? The paper proceeds to analyze the foreign policy documents and food aid allocation patterns of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the UAE. It argues that the allocation of food aid has a strategic role in these donors’ foreign policy as it offers an opportunity to connect with recipient countries who want to diversify their donor base. This challenges the Western-centric paradigm by setting an alternative development model that delinks aid from democratic conditionality. The paper contends that the rise of these donors reflects rapidly shifting geopolitics and the growing unpredictability of global food security. The conclusion raises critical questions about the future of multilateral cooperation and the possibilities for establishing a consensus on the principles of humanitarian action on a global scale.
Paper short abstract
I analyse Thai public education budgets in the conflict-affected Deep South as instruments of rule and negotiation. Using new district-fiscal-year data, I explore how shifts in public education spending relate to violence, and to centre-periphery struggles over authority.
Paper long abstract
This paper examines the budgetary politics of civil conflict through the case of basic education spending in Thailand’s Deep South. In Pattani, Yala, Narathiwat and parts of Songkhla, school budgets are not merely technical allocations, but could also be central instruments through which the Thai state seeks to govern a contested periphery. Education spending promises development and redress, yet it is also bound up with militarisation, surveillance, and struggles over who controls school curricula, jobs, and resources.
I assemble a new district-fiscal-year dataset that links Ministry of Education budget data to geocoded conflict events. The data distinguish between current expenditures (teachers, wages, operations) and capital investments (schools, classrooms, facilities), thereby allowing me to trace how different components of the education budget covary with the incidence and lethality of violence over time. Using panel models with district and year effects, I investigate how fiscal choices around schooling function as a conflict-management strategy, and under what conditions they appear to calm, displace, or intensify contestation.
Rather than treating education spending as a pure developmental tool, the paper foregrounds it as a site of political bargaining between state and insurgent-linked constituencies. Preliminary evidence points to a complex, time-varying relationship between spending and violence, in which the same fiscal flows can operate as attempted side-payments, signals of resolve, or triggers of backlash. The paper contributes to debates on how governments deploy budgets as strategic instruments of power in conflict-affected settings, and what this implies for reimagining development under conditions of enduring insecurity.
Paper long abstract
External development aid and national fiscal capacity of post-conflict states are not completely comprehended although they are the key to sustainable peacebuilding. Although a significant body of literature has been done to investigate the effectiveness of aggregates aid, less effort has been exerted to address the impacts of aid dependence on the structure and independence of national budgets in weak political settings. This paper examines the effects of different levels of dependence on official development assistance (ODA) on the budget structure, expenditure priorities of the government and the fiscal policy space of governments that come out of the armed conflict.
It uses an original panel sample that includes data on about 18 post-conflict countries for the period 2000-2022 based on combining OECD-DAC disbursement data, IMF Government Finance data, and governance indicators offered by World Bank in their Worldwide Governance Indicators. The research, based on instrumental variable corrections of endogeneity on fixed-effects estimation, investigates the claim that high levels of aid to budget are systematically related to lower levels of discretionary spending, sectoral allocations, and labour constrained revenue mobilisation activities.
The initial descriptive patterns are that the presence of heavy aid dependency states is characterised by consistent underinvestment in locally funded social areas and an excessive allocation of resources to security and debt repayment-patterns which may be attributed to conditionality and earmarking measures by donors. The article also questions the issue of heterogeneity by aid modalities by differentiating between general budget support, project-based assistance, and humanitarian flows.
Paper short abstract
This paper analyzes how political and policy shifts have shaped tax revenue trends in four fragile sub-Saharan African countries, revealing the importance of tailored, context-sensitive approaches for effective tax capacity building and domestic resource mobilization in post-conflict settings.
Paper long abstract
This paper investigates the role of political and policy changes in shaping tax revenue trends in four Sub-Saharan African countries: the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Rwanda, Sierra Leone, and Mozambique. While these four countries have faced significant statebuilding challenges and received sizeable aid flows, they display divergent patterns in tax revenue collection over the period 1980–2023. Using a structural break test model on time series data of tax revenue as a share of GDP, the study identifies the timing and significance of shifts in tax revenue trends and examines their correspondence with key political and policy changes. For example, in the DRC, a major break in 2007 aligns with political normalization following the 2006 elections, while in Mozambique, a notable shift corresponds to reforms in tax administration and tax policy structure (e.g., introduction of digital taxation, removal of tax exemptions, introduction of value-added taxes). Sierra Leone’s 1999 break coincides with political stabilization after conflict, and in Rwanda, structural changes are linked to post-conflict reconstruction and the introduction of significant tax reforms. Complementary comparative analysis of tax categories and reform reports since 2000 highlights the country-specific nature of these developments. The results underscore the importance of context-sensitive policy evaluation and suggest that international support for tax capacity building must be tailored to the unique political and institutional environments of fragile states. These insights offer valuable guidance for future research and policy interventions to strengthen domestic resource mobilization in post-conflict settings.