Publication

This publication addresses the Moro conflict in the southern Philippines by developing a political-economic explanation of it. The author argues that the war, the persistence of poverty and landlessness, and the emergence of entrepreneurs in violence are caused by the skewed distribution of land-ownership in the southern Philippines. The study posits that continuing weakness of state institutions in implementing agrarian reform as well as the absence of autonomous civil society are issues whose resolution may hold the key to establishing peace in the southern Philippines.