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Economic development is a basic requirement for the long-term viability of internationally administered territories. Discusses what is often a triple challenge for transitional administrators: physical reconstruction, structural transformation, and economic development, each with its own conceptual framework and approach. Overcoming this triple challenge requires a degree of co-ordination among external parties that can be difficult to achieve because of the inherent autonomy of the key actors involved: donor states, regional and international aid agencies, and development banks. A further difficulty arises when the strategic aims of the external actors are not shared by the local parties. Organized crime, corruption, and black- and grey-market activities can also pose serious threats to economic recovery.

This chapter deals with the period between the 1923 economic crisis and an even more severe economic breakdown in 1929. This period saw an engagement of the United States in Europe that had not been possible in the immediate postwar years, generating a few years of relative stability and prosperity in which American manufacturing companies and banks played a major role. It was the phase in which the United States succeeded in deploying its superior industrial and financial power in an attempt to uplift the economies of Europe. During those five years it was not only American ideas and practices of rationalized mass production that came to Europe through massive foreign direct investments; rather Europe, again for the first time, got a taste of mass consumption, even if it was still quite limited in terms of affordable consumer durables.

This chapter examines the third round in the German–American–British business relationship from 1941 to 1957. It begins with an account of Hitler's activities in Eastern Europe, before turning to the magazine article published by American businessman Henry Luce, entitled, “The American Century.” This article postulated that, if the twentieth century had not been an American one in its first half, the United States should at least make every effort to realize this idea in its second half, and shape a peace for the rest of the twentieth century that was based on American principles of sociopolitical and economic organization. From here, the chapter discusses the role of American big business in postwar and Cold War periods, the question of cartels, economic reconstruction, and others.

Chapter 8 examines the spike of sexual and gender-based violence in postconflict and peace-building environments. Despite recent UN Security Council resolutions, the invisibility of this violence against women during and after conflict marginalizes women in postconflict state-building and economic reconstruction processes. This economic and political marginalization of women exacerbates violence after conflict and hinders these peace-building efforts. The first part of the chapter applies the political economy approach of the book to reveal how gendered peacekeeping economies exacerbate violence against women. It critiques the prioritization of law and order over social and economic opportunities. The second part examines the role of women in peace-building decision making and economic reconstruction in places as diverse as East Timor; Aceh, Indonesia; Mindanao province in the Philippines; Iraq; Afghanistan; Colombia; Guatemala; the Congo; and Darfur. The chapter concludes by critically assessing two approaches to postconflict prevention of violence against women: the “good practice” of placing women peacekeepers in postconflict zones and the role of reparations in ensuring women's equal access to postconflict development.

Chapter 5 charts the other part of the Reconstruction experience--the activities of social and economic reconstruction. Extending the story into the late 1880s, it follows the rapid construction of rail lines into much of the Ozarks, the heyday of steamboating on the region’s rivers, modest efforts at manufacturing, and the growth of the timber and mining industries. In addition, chapter 5 examines efforts to rebuild the public education systems of Arkansas and Missouri and Reconstruction-era movements to cultivate higher education in the Ozarks.

This chapter traces the long-term development of German capitalism from the vantage point of uneven and combined development. It argues that Germany’s postwar social market economy was built upon an externally oriented developmental model inherited from its belated insertion into the world market, and used to enroll capital and labor in a global export offensive. The underlying vision of Germany as the workshop of an advanced industrial and newly industrializing world coincided with the postwar plans of the United States for an open, multilateral global economy. And yet the chapter cautions that the prevailing image of Germany as a liberal “trading state” (Handelsstaat) that had traded power for wealth as its prime objective fails to capture the novel ways in which the German state, from the crisis of the 1970s onward, has come to exert its influence internationally to sustain this export-led social model.

This chapter reflects on the dismal record of countries embarking on post-conflict reconstruction in both avoiding a relapse into chaos and in becoming aid-dependent. Experience with failed foreign interventions provides strong evidence that economic reconstruction is fundamentally different from normal development. The chapter posits that reconstruction is an intermediate phase in which all policies must be targeted towards avoiding a relapse into conflict. Experience also shows that, despite the peculiarities of each case, the path, timing, and sequencing of economic policies and reform are key to effective reconstruction. While dynamic growth must be a longer-term objective, it is argued that the main short-term objective must be to improve security and to ensure that the population can restore basic livelihoods—even if at subsistence levels. ‘Reconstruction zones’ are recommended as a means to start replacing aid with foreign investment to avoid aid dependency.

This chapter focuses on how the German government, in the post-war years, sought to provide firms with assurances about their access to international markets by supporting a set of multilateral institutions that protected free trade. In matters concerning the economy, Germany's support is informed by a distinct institutional rationale which promoted forms of multilateralism that would reinforce the domestic strategy of economic reconstruction. The chapter presents a summary of the direction, scope, and dominant features of reforms to the institutional architecture of the German economy after 1950. It also examines how German governments handled the reformation of key features of that architecture; how they built support within the business community; and how successful they were in creating the conditions under which the communities adopted product market strategies during periods of structural reform.

The unconditional surrender of Germany and the Allied assumption of full sovereign power raised the question of whether Germany had ceased to exist as a state. After the effective division of Germany, it served as part of the basis for the desire for reunification. Occupation, revelations about the crimes of the Third Reich, and division also inevitably raised questions about the nature of German identity. The political system of the Federal Republic was regulated by a Basic Law, a term chosen to emphasise the provisional character of the west German state. Because of the embodiment of the ideology in the German Democratic Republic, German political thought in this period was affected by the emphasis upon economic reconstruction and the so-called economic miracle of the 1950s.

The end of the First World War marked a turning point in the practices of sovereign borrowing. The League of Nations loan for Austria issued in 1923 precluded foreign creditor control of Austrian assets and policies. Instead, financial control and oversight were placed in the hands of the League of Nations Council and the technocrats advising it. International negotiation and collaboration in Geneva preempted Austria’s neighbour countries from turning economic reconstruction into a tool of their particularistic foreign policy interests. Neither foreign bondholders nor guarantor governments were granted direct oversight over Austrian policies. In order to keep emergency borrowing by bankrupt states free from the machinations of international power struggles and coveted spheres of interest, the World Bank and International Monetary Fund continued the practice of multilateral oversight and control following the Second World War.

This chapter, which considers the Second World War and its aftermath, reveals how the clubhouse provided a meeting place for those members whose contribution to the war effort kept them in London in 1939, as it had in 1914, and for those engaged in new debates on economic and moral reconstruction which arose before war broke out, continued throughout hostilities, and shaped the national agenda in 1945. In the case of Arthur Bryant's and Sir Charles Waldstein's own club, the 'secret power of England' was to be found in the lives and work not only of its leading politicians and serving officers who ran the war and became household names, but also its moralists, theologians, and economists who applied their minds to the demands of a future peace. Crucial to the war effort were those less well-known civil servants and intelligence officers, scientists, and engineers who used the clubhouse. While valiant efforts were made to maintain the usual services during the war, many aspects of club life were adversely affected. In its domestic economy, the Athenæum's responses to the exigencies of war were often reminiscent of those recorded in 1914–1918; shortages led to all kinds of restrictions.