Eli Berman's Study Finds Small Counterinsurgency Projects Effective
To win hearts and minds, focus on small projects, study finds
10/05/2011
Kevin Stacey,
University of Chicago Press Journals
U.S. efforts to bring stability to Iraq and Afghanistan in recent years have focused less on killing insurgents and more on gaining the cooperation of the local population. But does this population-centered approach to counterinsurgency actually work?
A study published today (October 4, 2011) in the Journal of Political Economy finds evidence that it does.
The study, by economist Eli Berman (University of California, San Diego) and political scientists Jacob Shapiro (Princeton) and Col. Joseph Felter (Stanford), focused on the Commander's Emergency Response Program (CERP) in Iraq. CERP empowers junior officers to spend reconstruction dollars on small, local projects like digging wells or paving rural roads.
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Eli Berman is a professor of economics at UC San Diego and a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. He is also currently Research Director for International Security Studies at the Institute for Global Conflict and Cooperation (IGCC).
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