CCAPS is happy to announce that this project's research has now been published as Constitutions and Conflict Management in Africa: Preventing Civil War through Institutional Design (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015).
The environmental, economic, and social stresses triggered by climate change may test the institutional capacity of African governments. Yet little systematic, comparative research has been done in Africa to determine which domestic political institutions produce the best outcomes under which conditions.
To address this gap in the literature, CCAPS leads a project on Constitutional Design and Conflict Management (CDCM) in Africa, bringing together seven of world's preeminent scholars in the field. Each expert examines a major African country to determine how past climate-related and other shocks have been mediated by domestic political institutions. The case studies seek to provide concrete insights into which governmental structures offer the best hope of mitigating the social stresses that may result from climate change. Countries under study include Burundi, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal, Sudan, and Zimbabwe. In addition, CDCM has created the first ever database of comparative constitutional design throughout the continent. The project aims to pinpoint African countries that are especially vulnerable to political instability and to identify the political institutions that the U.S. government should promote through its democracy and governance aid programs "“ to minimize the security consequences and human suffering that could result from climate change in Africa.
The CDCM team is led by Dr. Alan J. Kuperman, Associate Professor at the LBJ School of Public Affairs, and Eliezer Poupko serves as the Graduate Research Assistant on the project. Dr. Kuperman supervises the case studies by seven leading scholars:
Contributing to the project is a prestigious team of academics and practitioners, who help design the research methodology and critique the works in progress:
PREVIOUS EVENTS
Symposium on Constitutions and Conflict Management in Africa
October 16, 2015
Austin, Texas
Conference on Constitutional Design and Conflict Management in Africa
November 15, 2011
Austin, Texas
Case Studies Workshop
May 27, 2011
Antwerp, Belgium
Planning Meeting: Constitutional Design and Conflict Management
June 30, 2010
Washington, DC