Failing to learn: Legacies of aid and state-building

Why have recent attempts at state-building been largely unsuccessful? In this seminar, Nemat Bizhan, Dominik Zaum and Christine Cheng discuss the impact of foreign aid on recent state-building efforts.

Dr Nematullah Bizhan, Global Leaders Fellow and Visiting Fellow at Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University (ANU)

Speaker profiles:

Professor Dominik Zaum is Research Dean for Prosperity and Resilience in Politics and International Relations at the University of Reading. He is seconded for part of his time to UK's Department for International Development (DFID), as a Senior Research Fellow in Conflict and Fragility. He has worked with the UK Stabilisation Unit (2011-12), the UN in Kosovo (2003), and the Office of the High Representative in Bosnia and Herzegovina (2000). He is a Board Member of the Kosovar Stability Initiative (IKS), and is a member of the Steering Committee for the NOW/DFID supported Conflict and Cooperation in the Management of Climate Change programme. His research interests cover the political economy of state- and peacebuilding in conflict-affected countries, and the politics of international organisations, especially the UN Security Council. Professor Zaum has written and edited six books, most recently Legitimating International Organizations (OUP 2013), Political Economy of Statebuilding: Power after Peace (Routledge 2012, paperback edition 2013), and Selling the Peace: Corruption and Post-Conflict Peacebuilding (Routledge 2011, paperback edition 2013). He is currently working on a project on the political economy of corruption, conflict, and violence.

Dr Christine Cheng is Lecturer in War Studies at King’s College London, is Course Director for the MA in Conflict, Security, and Development (CSD), and is affiliated with King's Centre for Politics, Philosophy, and Law, and King's Gender Studies. Her research on post-conflict transitions sits at the intersection of international relations and comparative politics (with a focus on the politics of West Africa). Dr Cheng is the co-editor of Corruption and Post-Conflict Peacebuilding: Selling the Peace? (with Dominik Zaum). Her forthcoming book on Extralegal Groups (Oxford University Press) explores how ex-combatants affected state-building processes after the end of civil war in Liberia, to be published by Oxford University Press.

Dr Nematullah Bizhan is a Global Leaders Fellow (GLF) at GEG. He is a Visiting Fellow at Crawford School of Public Policy at the Australian National University (ANU). His areas of academic interest and expertise include the political economy of state building and state–society relations, international development, post-conflict transition, public health, and government accountability. His current research as an Oxford-Princeton Fellow includes a historical paired comparison of state building and development in South Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines, Colombia, Iraq, and Afghanistan. He has served as Afghanistan’s Deputy Minister for Youth; Founding Director General for Policy and Monitoring and Evaluation of Afghanistan Development Strategy; head of the secretariat for the Joint Coordination and Monitoring Board; and Acting Director General of Budget at the Ministry of Finance.

TS Eliot Lecture Theatre, Rose Lane Buildings (next to Botanic Gardens), Oxford OX1 4JD