Human Rights

Abstract: It is important to understand how conflicts within or between countries impact national economic and social development pathways, requiring policymakers to design effective mechanisms to counter the regressive effects of conflict. We explored the relationships between conflict and different types of development outcomes: economic growth, life expectancy, and educational attainment. We applied a dynamic …

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In August, Ronen Bar, the head of Israel’s general security service, the Shin Bet, wrote a remarkable letter to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israeli cabinet ministers. The letter didn’t get much attention in Israel or abroad, but it went to the heart of the crisis that has afflicted the country since the October 7, …

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In early August, as Ukrainian forces burst across the Russian border on their way to capturing some 385 square miles of Russian territory in the Kursk region, the Kremlin maintained it had everything under control: state media reported that Russian President Vladimir Putin was competently organizing relief efforts for the region’s inhabitants and directing the …

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Over four decades, in an effort to preserve itself, project regional influence, and deter adversaries, the Islamic Republic of Iran has invested in three projects: funding and arming a network of nonstate allies; developing ballistic missiles that can reach its rivals; and launching a nuclear program that can be either dialed down to deliver economic …

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The Hoover Digest explores politics, economics, and history, guided by the scholars and researchers of the Hoover Institution, the public policy research center at Stanford University. The opinions expressed in the Hoover Digest are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, or their supporters. As …

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The Democratic Party has spent years hoping that demography would equal destiny. As the country became more racially diverse, Democrats imagined that they would become the majority party thanks to support from Asian, Black and Hispanic voters. The politics of America, according to this vision, would start to resemble the liberal politics of California. It’s …

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Since 2022, the year that Andrew Tate first went viral online, a spectre has haunted headlines, school playgrounds and children’s smartphones: the rise in anti-feminism among boys. This often-violent ideology, adopted by young men and boys in droves, promotes conservative gender roles, the idea that women are inferior to men and that progress on women’s …

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Israel’s assassination of a top Hamas leader in Tehran in July, Ukraine’s incursion over the summer into Russia, and a recent series of increasingly assertive Chinese air and maritime interceptions in the South China Sea have fanned fears that long-simmering conflicts could escalate into broader wars. In the wake of these provocations, analysts fret about …

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From the start of his term as U.S. president, Donald Trump rang the alarm about the return of great-power competition. His administration’s first National Security Strategy emphasized that adversaries of the United States were seeking to erode its position in the international order. This outlook was relatively novel at the time, but today, much of …

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Last October 7, Hamas surprised Israel’s famed military and intelligence agencies. Both had known, for years, about the Palestinian armed group’s preparations to invade Israel and kill and kidnap its soldiers and citizens. But they failed to believe that it would dare or succeed to execute such an unprecedented operation. The Israeli military and intelligence …

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