Political institutions and political violence

This workshop will examine how political institutions affect the re-emergence of political violence, and how political institutions may be endogenous to, or shaped by, the foregoing conflict dynamics. While more and more research assesses how institutions affect conflict, often very little attention is paid in empirical research to the way in which these institutions are also shaped by previous and/or latent conflict. In these interactions political institutions are certainly likely to play a considerable role, but other institutional features of a particular state and its society are important as well. For instance media and educational policies often are of central concern in periods leading up to conflict and also in the immediate aftermath. Hence, the workshop would also like to engage scholars dealing with these institutions defined in a broader way in relation to conflict. More specifically, this workshop aims to attract papers on the linkages between institutions and conflict, in particular studies that seek to understand the micro-foundations of what these linkages may look like or consider their possible interrelationship.