Professional Affiliation

Associate researcher, CERAP

Expert Bio

Mr. A. Brice Bado is an associate researcher at the Centre de Recherche et d’Action pour la Paix (CERAP) in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire. Prior to his time at the Wilson Center, Mr. Bado was a visiting researcher at Yale University during the 2014-2015 academic year. Previously, Mr. Bado worked for Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS) in Kenya, the Research Center for Social Action in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Secours Catholic in France. His research interests include democracy, conflict analysis, forcibly displaced persons, and electoral processes in conflict ridden societies. His publications have appeared in the Journal of  International Migration and Integration, Revue Études, Revue Relations, and Débats-Courrier d’Afrique de l’Ouest, Sécurité Mondiale. In addition he has contributed chapters to several books. He has extensive field experience in election observation in West Africa, and has conducted research with electoral management bodies in Cote d’Ivoire, Liberia, Sierra Leone, the DRC, and Burkina Faso. He holds three Bachelor’s Degrees in Philosophy, Socio-Anthropology, and Theology, and three Masters Degrees in Social Ethics, International Human Rights Law, and Sociology and Anthropology. He is currently a Ph.D. Candidate in Political Science at Laval University in Canada. His doctoral research focuses on elections in post-civil conflict societies.

More information on the Southern Voices Network can be found here.

Wilson Center Project

"Foreign Electoral Assistance as a Strategy for Peace Building in Post-Conflict Societies"

Project Summary

Post-conflict elections are usually provisions included in peace agreements. One of their main objectives is to consolidate the peace process. In some cases like Sierra Leone in 2002 or Liberia in 2005, internationally assisted post-conflict elections returned those countries to normalcy. In other cases, like in Côte d’Ivoire in 2010 or Liberia in 1997, they failed and those countries witnessed a resumption of hostilities. Therefore, the question this research seeks to answer is: what determines the success or failure of electoral assistance as a tool for ending conflict in war-torn societies?

From a qualitative research approach, this paper will assess how electoral assistance programs and activities have empowered institutions and citizens both in successful and failed post-conflict elections. This empirical analysis will provide evidence to judge if differences in electoral assistance provisions in the case studies explain the difference of outcomes of post-conflict elections in contributing to the consolidation of peace.

Major Publications

Arsène Brice Bado (Ed.), Dynamiques des Guerres Civiles en Afrique, Paris: L’Harmattan, 2015

Arsène Brice Bado, “La démocratie au Burkina Faso aux prises avec les systèmes traditionnels de gouvernance”, Revue Études, n°4215, Avril 2015, pp.19-29.

Arsène Brice Bado, “Assessing advocacies for forcibly displaced people”, in Journal of International Migration and Integration, First published on line on January 21, 2015; DOI : 10.1007/s12134-015-0413-5, Accessible on : http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12134-015-0413-5