序論―開発と政治・紛争をみる新しい視角

抄録

The relationship among development, democracy and conflict is one of the most critical issues in international society, and there is a lot of academic research that helps analyze the relationship among economic development, political systems, and security (or conflict).
Many researches show the correlation among them and imply that there are some linkages between these factors, but those linkages are not simple and causal relations are not yet clear and still in open debate.
As to the relationship among economic development, democracy and social stability (or conflict), the cross-national regression analyses were typical works, which showed that economic development correlated with the level of democracy, and that social instability correlated with low income and income inequality.
On the other hand, some different analyses showed that the relationship between socio-political instability and economic factors such as low income was not so clear. Some argue that the correlation between the level of income and the degree of democracy doesn't show that democratic system is a prerequisite of economic development, but that it implies that people in a rich society tend to look for a liberal democratic system, and that there were many cases in which transition to democracy lead to economic turmoil. Others argue that there are many types of democratic systems and there is no agreement on whether a centralized system or a decentralized system is more effective for economic development, democracy, or even national integration.
As such, the relationship among democracy, economic development and conflict is very complicated, and causal relations among them have not yet been proven in detail.
Especially after the end of cold war, the international community began to engage into the problems of poverty, inequity, social instability, and political systems from the perspective of peace-building. Peace-building is the process to assist comprehensive state-building including security, democratic system, and economic development. Thus, the concepts of peace-building and state-building have been the key words in many studies and dialogues among donor agencies and in international community as a whole.
It is necessary for us to make further studies for clarifying the complicated relationship among development, democracy and conflict. Those academic studies are also useful for international community to assist all aspects of these three pillars (development, democracy and stability) of peace-building and state-building more effectively.
This volume contains 10 challenging academic articles to investigate the relationship among development, democratic systems and conflict, based on the interdisciplinary methods or comparative case studies, etc., and summarizes the new findings of them.