Departures With Robert Amsterdam

Throughout the global supply chain, there are chokepoints where states and stakeholders exploit an opportunity to extract rents - and this includes nearby the origin of critical minerals, diamonds, and other natural resources in relatively ungoverned areas of Africa such as the Eastern Congo. Peer Schouten, who is a senior researcher at the Danish Institute for International Studies and who has spent years working in the DRC and the Central African Republic, has now published one of the first studies comprehensively documenting these roadblocks, how they are politically managed, and what they mean in terms of funding rebel groups and violent conflicts which have become such a high-profile geopolitical concern. With more than a decade's worth of field work, Schouten's excellent book, "Roadblock Politics: The Origins of Violence in Central Africa," challenges a number of longstanding Western presumptions about state formation and conflict in the region. His findings highlight connections between multinational c