Introduction: Political Settlements, Rupture and Violence

This Special Issue of Conflict, Security & Development explores the relationship between political settlements and violence. While there is an emerging body of scholarship on political settlements, its relationship to violence has been under-theorised and has not been systematically examined through comparative country case studies. This Special Issue is the result of a DFID-funded research programme on addressing and mitigating violence co- ordinated by the Institute of Development Studies. A workshop was organised in Goodenough College in London in 2015 to discuss the research findings with representatives from DFID and the FCO, regional experts as well as leading academics who have contributed to the development of the concept of political settlement.