Global contributors discuss the theoretical controversies concerning the merits and demerits of affirmative action, and explain why affirmative action is needed in multi-ethnic countries. They analyse actual experience with affirmative action policies - their origin, nature and consequences - in nine countries.

This book evaluates the extent to which post-conflict reconstruction has addressed problems of horizontal inequalities through country case studies on Burundi, Rwanda, Nepal, Peru, Guatemala, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Afghanistan, and four thematic studies on macro-economic policies, privatisation, PRSP's, and employment generation.

The first major comparative study of the causes and consequences of violent conflict that integrates and addresses the issue of self-determination. The authors show that with violent conflict in the developing world as the critical issue for the twenty-first century, and conflict prevention a central security problem for both the developed and developing world, self-determination movements can only be understood, and conflict prevented, in the context of global economic and cultural forces, and of local responses to them.

The authors show that with violent conflict in the developing world as the critical issue for the twenty-first century, and conflict prevention a central security problem for the developed and developing world, self-determination movements can only be understood, and conflict prevented, in the context of global economic and cultural forces