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India's rapid economic growth over the last decade has been coupled with a Maoist insurgency that competes for the allegiances of rural populations with the state. In response to the threat, the Government of India has securitized development, using public works programs in an attempt to sway locals away from Maoist allegiance. However, these areas are also home to massive iron, coal, and steel factories that drive India's growth. This study uniquely aimed to address the lack of local-level analysis and the lack of a robust dataset by merging previous qualitative fieldwork with disparate conflict data sources at the district level to explore different potential explanatory variables for the Maoist insurgency, including the relationship between development works, violence, and natural resource extraction. We find that while effective implementation of development programs like NREGA may indeed be loosely related to the suppression of violent activities in districts affected by the Maoist conflict, it is the presence of significant mining activity that is the best predictor of violence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the relationship between transnationalism and integration by examining the determinants of remittance-sending practices. We base our analysis on the premise that remittance-sending is shaped by a combination of migrants' capacity and desire to remit. Capacity to remit depends on access to funds that can be remitted, be it through wages, other income, or savings. Desire to remit determines how remittance-sending is prioritized in relation to alternative expenditures. We assume that capacity is shaped by circumstances in the country of residence while desire depends on attachment and commitments in both the country of residence and the country of origin. Our analysis is based on survey data on immigrants in Norway (N=3053). We find that economic integration is important for remittance-sending, and point to different mechanisms through which this effect could operate. Migrants' socio-cultural integration, however, appears not to have significant effects on remittance-sending. Our approach and results illustrate how different aspects of integration can have divergent impacts on transnationalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why are some countries more prone to social violence than others? Despite the fact that annual deaths due to social violence outnumber those due to organized armed conflict by a factor of roughly 3 to 1, this question has received very little attention from conflict and development specialists in recent years. As a modest first step in addressing this gap in the literature we draw together theoretical and empirical insights from the conflict and criminology literatures to construct an empirical model of social violence, placing particular emphasis on politicalinstitutional arrangements, poverty, inequality and ethnic diversity as explanatory factors. Utilizing cross-country estimates of homicide related deaths produced by the World Health Organization as an indicator of social violence, we test this model using OLS regression analysis for a sample of more than 120 countries. We find that countries with 'hybrid' political orders experience higher rates of social violence than those with strong autocratic or strong democratic regimes, and that weakly institutionalised democracies are particularly prone to social violence. We also find robust associations between indicators of poverty, inequality and ethnic diversity and social violence. These results suggest that social and political violence may share some common underlying causes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]