Resident Fellow Mauro De Lorenzo

International post-conflict administrators rarely have a strategy for economic growth. They tend to focus on humanitarian action, politics, and security, usually in that order. What could be more urgent?

Each of these tasks is seen as a crucial part of the state-building project. Accordingly, administrators privilege the public sector over the private sector, which has no address and no spokesman. The state, on the other hand, is easy to find and is usually in desperate shape. Restoring the state to health--principally as demonstrated by its ability to absorb foreign aid--can quite naturally come to be seen as the beginning and the end of peace-building. . . .

 Click here to view the full book chapter as an Adobe Acrobat PDF.

Mauro De Lorenzo is a resident fellow at AEI.