Preventive Measures: Building Risk Assessment and Crisis Early Warning Systems

by John L. Davies (Editor), Ted Robert Gurr (Editor), Adeel Ahmed (Contributor)

State failure, ethnopolitical war, genocide, famine, and refugee flows are variants of a type of complex political and humanitarian crisis, exemplified during the 1990s in places like Somalia, Bosnia, Liberia, and Afghanistan. The international consequences of such crises are profound, often threatening regional security and requiring major inputs of humanitarian assistance. They also may pose long-term and costly challenges of rebuilding shattered governments and societies. A vital policy question is whether failures can be diagnosed far enough in advance to facilitate effective international efforts at prevention or peaceful transformation. This volume of original essays examines crisis early warning factors at different levels, in different settings, and judges their effectiveness according to various models. Top contributors offer answers along with analyses as they move from early warning to early response in their policy recommendations.

503 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1998

About the author

John L. Davies, LLB, MLitt, MS, PhD is Co-Director of the Partners in Conflict and Partners in Peacebuilding Projects, and Senior Associate with the Center for International Development and Conflict Management (CIDCM), Department of Government and Politics, at the University of Maryland.

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