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ABSTRACT The democratic peace may be the most salient institutionally-driven peace, but it is not the first. Our paper examines how dynasticism brought about a process of peaceful territorial aggregation in the midst of a world that was as violent as the twentieth century by changing the rules that governed inheritance and succession via the introduction of primogeniture and female inheritance. These innovations eliminated the problems created by partible inheritance by restricting the number of legitimate claimants upon property (which included political offices) and in the process dramatically reduced the uncertainty and potential for conflict that had surrounded the disposition of property upon the death of a feudal lord. As a result, the fragmentation of landholdings and political power that was on the verge of destroying the economic viability and security of Latin Europe was reversed in only a few decades and a process of nonviolent consolidation took place that was not to be rivaled until the creation of the EU in the late twentieth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine a previously untapped dataset which quantifies NGO Capacity, or the ability of NGOs to formulate and implement their goals. We explore these data, and compare them with another little-used dataset - the mechanism donor states use to deliver their foreign aid to intended beneficiaries. Utilizing a sample selection model, we investigate how recipient governance and NGO Capacity affect donor states' aid allocation and channel of delivery decisions. We hypothesize that donors will choose non-state channels in recipients with poor governance, and that they will choose NGOs more often in recipients with high NGO Capacity. We find that while donors respond to poor recipient governance in the predicted way at a global level, they do not do so at a regional level in Central and Eastern Europe or in Africa. Furthermore, we find little evidence that donors take NGO Capacity into account when making aid allocation and channel of delivery decisions. Donors appear to either ignore NGO Capacity entirely or utilize NGOs more often in the recipients with the worst NGO Capacity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]