Labour markets, employment, and the transformation of war economies

Abstract

Although many different analyses in some ways acknowledge the relevance of labour markets to the political economy of violent conflict and of war to peace transitions, there has been little sustained or systematic exploration of this dimension of war economies and post-conflict reconstruction. This paper highlights the empirical and analytical gaps and suggests that a framework departing from the assumptions of the liberal interpretation of war allows for a richer analysis of labour market issues and policies. This is illustrated by the history of rural Mozambique through the war economy and into the first post-war decade.

Notes

 1. Wood, Insurgent Collective Action and Civil War in El Salvador.

 2. For example, Collier, ‘Doing Well out of War: An Economic Perspective’. See also Nafziger and Auvinen, Economic Development, Inequality and War: Humanitarian Emergencies in Developing Countries’, 46–48, on the way that communal conflict over employment opportunities was a major factor contributing to the linked political crises in Nigeria of the 1964–65 election violence, the coups of January and July 1966, and the civil war of 1967–1970.

 3. See, for example, Luckham et al., ‘Conflict and Poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa: an assessment of the issues and evidence’, 31–32, and the examples in the ODI case studies in Collinson et al., Livelihoods and Conflict: Case Studies in Political Economy Analysis for Humanitarian Action, Humanitarian Policy Group Report No. 13.

 4. Fanthorpe, ‘Neither Citizen nor Subject? ‘Lumpen’ Agency and the Legacy of Native Administration in Sierra Leone’.

 5. Lévy, War, Evil, and the End of History.

 6. Date-Bah, Jobs After War: A Critical Challenge in the Peace and Reconstruction Puzzle, 1.

 7. Krishnamurty, ‘The Labour Market and Conflict’, 60.

 8. On labour-based infrastructure rebuilding see, e.g. , The Planning, Design and Implementation of Employment-Intensive Investment Programmes; Employment-Intensive Reconstruction Works in Countries Emerging from Armed Conflict.

 9. Woodward, ‘Economic Priorities for Peace Implementation’.

10. Dunne, ‘Challenges of Armed Conflict to Jobs and other Socio-Economic Issues in Africa’, 44.

11. Krishnamurty, ‘The Labour Market and Conflict’, 55.

12. Krishnamurty, ‘The Labour Market and Conflict’, 55., also notes that in countries like Sierra Leone or the DRC such figures simply do not exist for any recent period but that even where labour force estimates exist, as in Sri Lanka, they are based on the areas under government control and either exclude disturbed parts of the country or ‘estimate’ the figures for these parts (p. 55).

13. Nafziger and Auvinen, Economic Development, Inequality and War, 46.

14. See Howard War and the Liberal Conscience; Milward The Economic Effects of the Two World Wars on Britain; and Cramer Civil War is Not a Stupid Thing. On liberalism and war in the 20th and 21st centuries, see also Williams, Liberalism and War: the victors and the vanquished; and Richmond in this issue.

15. Matovu and Stewart, ‘Uganda: The Social and Economic Costs of Conflict’.

16. Collinson, Power, Livelihoods and Conflict, 15.

17. Paris, At War's End: Building Peace After Civil Conflict.

18. Collier et al., Breaking the Conflict Trap.

19. Azam et al., ‘Some Economic Consequences of the Transition from Civil War to Peace’.

20. Byres, ‘Neoliberalism and Primitive Accumulation in LDCs’; Cramer, Civil War is Not a Stupid Thing.

21. Keen, The Benefits of Famine: A Political Economy of Famine and Relief in Southwestern Sudan, 1983–1989.

22. Ibrahim Elnur, in a conference presentation in Bergen, Norway, 9 June 2005.

23. Sender, ‘Women's Struggle to Escape Poverty in Rural South Africa’.

24. Whitaker, Changing Opportunities: Refugees and Host Communities in Western Tanzania. On labour markets and population movements in Africa, see Sender, Cramer and Oya, Unequal Prospects: Disparities in the Quantity and Quality of Labour Supplies in Sub-Saharan Africa.

25. United States Institute of Peace, AIDS and Violent Conflict in Africa, Special Report No. 75.

26. Epstein, ‘AIDS: the lessons of Uganda’; Ronaldson, ‘Uganda: A Model for HIV/AIDS Prevention in Africa?’

27. Carballo and Solby, ‘HIV/AIDS, Conflict, and Reconstruction in Sub-Saharan Africa’.

28. Human Rights Watch, The War Within the War: Sexual Violence against Women and Girls in Eastern Congo.

29. International Crisis Group, The Kivus: the Forgotten Crucible of the Congo Conflict.

30. UNAIDS, Population Mobility and AIDS.

31. Chingono, The State, Violence and Development: The political economy of war in Mozambique.

32. Cramer, Civil War is Not a Stupid Thing; Bourgeois, ‘The Continuum of Violence in War and Peace: Post-Cold War Lessons from El Salvador’.

33. Tilly, The Politics of Collective Violence.

34. Surhke, Conflictual Peacebuilding: Afghanistan Two Years after Bonn.

35. Kriger, Guerrilla Veterans in Post-War Zimbabwe: Symbolic and Violent Politics, 1980–87, 1–34, 141–184.

36. Adam, Peace-making in Divided Societies: The Israel–South Africa Analogy.

37. Hirschman, ‘Social Conflicts as Pillars of Democratic Market Societies’.

38. Dunne, ‘Challenges of Armed Conflict’, 37.

39. Goodhand, ‘Afghanistan in Central Asia’, 59.

40. Nordstrom, Shadows of War: Violence, Power, and International Profiteering in the Twenty-First Century, 191.

41. Fieldwork in Mozambique also suggests that the very few provincial labour inspectors rarely travel outside provincial capitals, partly because they are not allocated vehicles.

42. In particular, the section draws on Cramer (2006) and Wuyts (2003).

43. Brück, Coping Strategies in Post-War Rural Mozambique, 3.

44. Tschirley, and Benfica, Smallholder Agriculture, Wage Labour, and Rural Poverty Alleviation in Mozambique: What Does the Evidence Tell Us?

45. Tschirley, and Benfica, Smallholder Agriculture, Wage Labour, and Rural Poverty Alleviation in Mozambique: What Does the Evidence Tell Us?

46. Chingono, The State, Violence and Development; Castel-Branco and Cramer, ‘Privatization and Economic Strategy in Mozambique’; Pitcher, Transforming Mozambique: The Politics of Privatization, 1975–2000.

47. O'Laughlin, ‘Through a Divided Glass: Dualism, Class and the Agrarian Question in Mozambique’.

48. Wuyts, ‘The Agrarian Question in Mozambique's Transition and Reconstruction’.

49. Wuyts, ‘The Agrarian Question in Mozambique's Transition and Reconstruction’., 147.

50. Pitcher, Transforming Mozambique.

51. O'Laughlin, ‘Through a Divided Glass’, 32.

52. Wuyts, ‘The Agrarian Question’.

53. For example, O'Laughlin, ‘Through a Divided Glass’.

54. Sender et al., ‘Women Working for Wages: Putting Flesh on the Bones of a Rural Labour Market Survey in Mozambique’.

55. Cramer, ‘Privatization and Adjustment in Mozambique’; Pitcher, Transforming Mozambique.

56. The rural vision and the overall projection of an ideological fantasy came together most sharply in the World Bank's now infamous treatment of Mozambique's cashew sector, in what amounted to post-conflict economic destruction (Cramer, ‘Can Africa Industrialize by Processing Primary Commodities? The Case of Mozambican Cashew Nuts’; McMillan et al., When Economic Reform Goes Wrong: Cashews in Mozambique; Pitcher, Transforming Mozambique). The World Bank insisted on rapid removal of the tax on unprocessed cashew exports and a broad liberalization of the sector, expecting some loss of processing manufacturing capacity but a strong revival of cashew cultivation and unprocessed exports: most processing factories did close down but the production and export of unprocessed nuts has not expanded in anything like the way it was projected to by textbook reforms.

57. Writing of the bad debt and corruption at the Banco Comercial de Moçambique and at the Austral bank, Addison argues: ‘The high fiscal cost of resolving bank crises takes public money from much-needed development spending and social spending. As part shareholder in BCM and Austral, the Government of Mozambique faces a bill of at least US$ 80 million (to be raised by issuing treasury bonds), and possibly more if the banks’ private shareholders cannot meet their share of the recapitalization.… Mozambique's domestic debt was in decline prior to the banks’ failure, but is now expected to rise from MT 15 billion to MT 196 billion. As a country still reconstructing from war, and one in which 69 per cent of the population is poor, Mozambique can ill afford the fiscal burden of bank crisis’ (Addison et al., ‘Financial Reconstruction in Conflict and ‘Post-Conflit’ Economies’).

58. Paris, At War's End, 145.

59. Hanlon, ‘Do Donors Promote Corruption? The Case of Mozambique’.

60. Sender et al., Unequal Prospects.

61. See Fauvet and Mosse Carlos Cardoso: Telling the Truth in Mozambique.

62. Wuyts, ‘The Agrarian Question’, 153.

63. Addison, ‘From Conflict to Recovery’.

64. Nafziger and Auvinen, Economic Development, Inequality and War.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Christopher Cramer

Christopher Cramer is a Senior Lecturer at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London, where he convenes the MSc in Violence, Conflict and Development. His recent research interests include the political economy of violence and of war to peace transitions, poverty and rural labour markets in Sub-Saharan Africa, and fair trade. His book, Civil War is Not a Stupid Thing: Accounting for Violence in Developing Countries (Hurst, London) was published in 2006. He can be contacted on [email protected]