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Welcome to the Conflict Research Programme Blog!

The Conflict Research Programme (CRP) was an international research programme led by LSE IDEAS at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). It aimed to explore the drivers of violence in the Middle East and Africa, and understand what kinds of interventions work to reduce armed conflict and its impacts. The CRP was funded by UK aid from the UK government from October 2017 to March 2021.

The programme worked in five countries: Iraq, Syria, Somalia, South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo. We also worked regionally across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) and the Horn of Africa/Red Sea.

Our research was based on three logics of public authority, which provided thematic areas and starting points for our blogs:

  1. The Political Marketplace, which we understood as a system dominated by monetised transactional politics, patronage networks, and bargaining.
  2. Identity Politics and;
  3. Civicness, which includes the political and social manifestations of the values of humanity and non-violence.

Through this blog platform we aimed to share our research ideas in a new, accessible and digestible way. We sought to unpack these three logics and explore what they could mean across our different research sites.

All of our blogs were authored by the CRP research teams, our partners, as well as affiliated researchers.

Our Iraq and MENA sites were led by our neighbours at the LSE Middle East Centre. You can view their CRP blogs here.

More information:

To learn more about the Conflict Research Programme, our research framework, partners and publications, visit our website here.

You can also get in contact with us via email at intdev.crp@lse.ac.uk (note that correspondence to this is limited due to the end of the programme) or on Twitter @LSE_CCS

Note: The CRP blogs gives the views of the author, not the position of the Conflict Research Programme, the London School of Economics and Political Science, or the UK Government.

 

 


Comments Policy

The CRP blog welcomes comments on all blogs and will accept any reasonable or constructive comment that contributes to debate, including strong criticisms, so feel free to say what you want within reason. The blog operates a propriety filter, so comments are routed to the blog editor and not posted for public view until they have been checked. There will be a brief delay in posting overnight and at weekends. Please note that the comments system operates under the following guidelines:

  • Email Privacy: Email addresses are required for commenting, and they are not published on the blog, nor shared. They may be used by the blog editor to privately contact the commenter.
  • Language and Manners: This blog is for a wide audience, and comments which include offensive or inappropriate language, or considered by the blog editor to be rude and offensive, will be edited or deleted.
  • No Personal Attack Comments Permitted: No personal attacks are permitted in this blog’s comments. You may question or argue the content, but not attack the blogger, nor any other commenters.
  • A Comment is Conversation: A comment which does not add to the conversation, runs off on an inappropriate tangent, or kills the conversation may be edited, or deleted.
  • Limit Links: This blog is setup to automatically hold any blog comment with more than two links in moderation, which may delay your comment from appearing on this blog. Any blog comment with more than four links could be marked as comment spam.
  • What To Do If Your Comment Does Not Appear: If you leave a comment on this blog and it does not appear in a reasonable time period, and you know that it does not violate these Comment Policies, contact the blog team at intdev.crp@lse.ac.uk.
  • Commenters Blocked: Anyone who violates this Comments Policy may be blocked from commenting on this blog.
    All Rights Reserved: The blog committee reserves the right to edit, delete, move, or mark as spam any and all comments. They also have the right to block access to any individual or group of people from commenting, or from the entire blog.
The CRP blog is funded by UK aid from the UK government; however the views expressed do not necessarily reflect the UK government’s official policies.