{"title":"Robert D Lamb","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"uncertain-transition-from-stability-to-peace-book-robert-d-lamb-9781442240551","title":"The Uncertain Transition from Stability to Peace","description":"Most violent conflicts since the turn of this century were in countries that had experienced an earlier violent conflict. How can we tell when a country is likely to remain stuck in a cycle of violence? What factors suggest it might be “ripe” for stabilizing and peace building? The authors studied four cases: Chad is stuck in a cycle of violence, while El Salvador, Laos, and Mozambique have had different results in their transitions from violence to stability to peace. Conflicts without internal cohesion of combatants or pressure from foreign patrons to stop fighting are probably not ripe for stabilizing. Where there are subnational or regional actors committed to violence, post-conflict peace building is not likely to succeed without enforcement capacity to contain violence or demonstrated commitments to increasing political inclusion and making material improvements in the lives of residents.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49733220598033,"sku":"NGR9781442240551","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52352418316561,"sku":"NLS9781442240551","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1442240555.jpg?v=1750988159"},{"product_id":"advances-and-challenges-in-political-transitions-book-robert-d-lamb-9781442240414","title":"Advances and Challenges in Political Transitions","description":"The United States has provided support to political transitions worldwide for many years. But it was just twenty years ago that the US government established an office specifically to respond when regimes or conflicts ended and to maintain momentum toward positive change. Today's conflicts, however, are more complex, usually involving half a dozen or scores of armed groups--and their alliances and motivations are not always clear. Seldom are peace agreements in place to act as a roadmap to the transition. And transition work now more commonly begins before violence even ends. This report, published on the twentieth anniversary of the founding of the Office of Transition Initiatives at the US Agency for International Development, considers what today's complexities imply for how conflicts and transition work might evolve in the future, with chapters on each major region of the world and on topics such as extremism, urbanization, gender, and humanitarian response.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52331174035729,"sku":"NLS9781442240414","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9781442240414.jpg?v=1758147560"},{"product_id":"absorptive-capacity-in-the-security-and-justice-sectors-book-robert-d-lamb-9781442225138","title":"Absorptive Capacity in the Security and Justice Sectors","description":"In development, stabilization, and peace building, donors increasingly recognize the importance of being sensitive to the local contexts of their efforts. Yet the use of blueprints remains widespread. Even when standard approaches are modified for particular aid partners, there often remains a poor fit between donor efforts and local conditions. When recipients cannot absorb the aid and attention they are offered, the common response is capacity building. While it is true that many aid recipients do not have adequate capacity for implementation, this report presents the results of a case study demonstrating that some security and justice programs are designed and implemented without an adequate appreciation of local desires, resources, capabilities, and challenges. Absorptive capacity, in other words, is a byproduct of the donor-recipient relationship. An earlier study by the authors introduced a new framework for measuring absorptive capacity. This volume applies it to security and justice sector programs that did not meet all of their objectives in Lebanon, Cambodia, and Colombia.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52331196776721,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52331197497617,"sku":"NLS9781442225138","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9781442225138.jpg?v=1758147640"},{"product_id":"rethinking-legitimacy-and-illegitimacy-book-robert-d-lamb-9781442228597","title":"Rethinking Legitimacy and Illegitimacy","description":"This report introduces a new assessment framework for legitimacy and illegitimacy that governments, businesses, and other organizations can use to better understand the sources and dynamics of support or opposition for any entity, policy, or program. It includes an intellectual history of the concept of legitimacy, summarizes the literature, introduces a new conceptualization of illegitimacy, and outlines four types of legitimacy assessments, from a rapid to a comprehensive assessment.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52331870421265,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52331871076625,"sku":"NLS9781442228597","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9781442228597.jpg?v=1758149740"},{"product_id":"rethinking-civilian-stabilization-and-reconstruction-book-robert-d-lamb-9781442227798","title":"Rethinking Civilian Stabilization and Reconstruction","description":"Can the United States prevent or end conflicts and protect its interests without using military force? Do U.S. civilian institutions have the right mix of support, funding, and capabilities to respond to major crises and political transitions? In July 2013, CSIS raised these questions before more than 200 policymakers and experts, with 22 speakers offering perspectives from donors, implementers, and recipients. The demand for civilian power is high. U.S. leaders are under constant pressure to respond to armed conflicts abroad. Better civilian tools could help avoid more risky (and costly) military engagements. The past decade has seen real improvement in civilian stabilization and reconstruction capabilities. Yet many lessons of the past eight decades remain unlearned, and public support to civilian agencies remains low.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52331960566033,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52331961123089,"sku":"NLS9781442227798","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9781442227798.jpg?v=1758150054"},{"product_id":"rethinking-absorptive-capacity-book-robert-d-lamb-9781442225053","title":"Rethinking Absorptive Capacity","description":"When recipients cannot absorb the aid and attention they are offered, the common response is capacity building-as if the source of the problem is the recipient's implementation capacity. In this report, Robert D. Lamb and Kathryn Mixon present the results of their research on the sources of absorptive capacity. They find that this sort of blaming the victim mentality, while common, is not always justified. While it is true that many aid recipients do not have adequate capacity for implementation, it is equally true that many aid programs are designed and implemented without an adequate appreciation of local desires, resources, capabilities, and challenges. Absorptive capacity, in other words, is a byproduct of the donor-recipient relationship. The authors present a new framework for measuring absorptive capacity. This framework is intended to supplement existing planning, monitoring, and evaluation processes, offering a new way to test whether an existing approach is compatible with local conditions and a method for improving the fit.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52332122571025,"sku":"NLS9781442225053","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9781442225053.jpg?v=1758150606"},{"product_id":"u-s-policy-responses-to-potential-transitions-book-robert-d-lamb-9781442224650","title":"U.S. Policy Responses to Potential Transitions","description":"Every three weeks, a major political crisis begins somewhere in the world. The United States intervenes in less than a fifth of them. But that is still a new U.S. intervention about every two months. And almost all of them are civilian interventions; less than a third involve the military. 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Its recommendations focus on the disconnect between the high demand for civilian power and the support civilian institutions have for responding to such crises, and on the importance of caution and moderation when deciding whether and how to intervene.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52350841127185,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52350845387025,"sku":"NLS9781442224650","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9781442224650.jpg?v=1758180541"},{"product_id":"political-governance-and-strategy-in-afghanistan-book-robert-d-lamb-9780892067152","title":"Political Governance and Strategy in Afghanistan","description":"Afghanistan's de facto system of governance is a politically driven hybrid order made up of shifting links among many different formal, informal, and illicit actors, networks, and institutions. Because its central government does not have the capacity to govern through its extremely centralized system and will not have that capacity for at least a generation, it will need to share the burden of stabilizing and governing the country with other governance and political actors. Alone, those other actors will not have the capacity to keep Afghanistan together either.To use Afghanistan's hybrid system as a resource for stabilization, the United States should work with its international and Afghan partners to develop a political governance strategy. The requirements for such an approach are detailed in this report. The governance component would encourage and enable formal and informal actors to share the burden of governing. To make sure power brokers do not contribute to instability, the politics component would give some a stake in the political and economic system while giving the most malign a set of targeted incentives to behave in ways conducive to stability.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":53521742823697,"sku":"NLS9780892067152","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9780892067152.jpg?v=1778455467"},{"product_id":"subnational-governance-service-delivery-and-militancy-in-pakistan-book-robert-d-lamb-9780892067169","title":"Subnational Governance, Service Delivery, and Militancy in Pakistan","description":"This report presents the results of a study on whether a link exists between the rise of militants and the quality of subnational governance in Pakistan and, if one exists, what the United States can do about it, if anything. Its basic finding is that Pakistan's governance problems are not caused by militancy, and its problems with militancy are not directly caused by its governance problems, but improving governance will be necessary (though not sufficient) to counter militancy. Pakistan's governance problems are not insurmountable, and recent trends offer reason for hope: the military's prestige has declined, the civilian government is likely to complete its full term, the judiciary is increasingly independent, civil society is increasingly confident even in the face of militant intimidation, and recent reforms-the Local Governance Ordinance of 2001 and the Eighteenth Amendment to the constitution-have put in place a set of institutions and incentives likely to contribute to improvements in the future. 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