1 – Revolution, War, and Trust
Anna Minasyan
Curtin University (Australia) and University of Groningen (The Netherlands)
Abstract: Government trust in Armenia underwent an unprecedented rise and fall, rising from 22 percent in 2017 to 71 percent in 2019 and then sharply dropping to 14 percent in 2021. This swift shift can be attributed to two pivotal events: the successful Velvet Revolution in 2018 and the military loss in the Second Nagorno-Karabakh (NK) War in 2020. This study explores the precise impact of these events, as shocks to institutions, on government trust by exploiting geographic disparities in exposure. Using an event study design and a unique pseudo-panel based on geo-referenced survey data from 2017, 2019, and 2021, with over 4,700 respondents across 182 locations, we find that exposure to the Velvet Revolution increased government trust by 40 percentage points in 2019, while exposure to the NK War reduced it by 20 percentage points in 2021 compared to the baseline. Exposure to both events further decreased government trust by seven percentage points in 2021. Voting results align with our findings, with the incumbent government gaining votes in protest-exposed locations and losing support in war-exposed areas. An investigation into the mechanisms revealed that, post-war, regions unaffected by the conflict but exposed to the Velvet Revolution prioritized concerns related to unemployment and poverty, contrasting with the prioritization of conflict-related issues in the rest of the country. Our results suggest that the potential effect of the negative institutional shock on political survival can be alleviated if it occurs following a positive shock and if the exposure to the negative shock varies within the country despite its national significance.
2 – The role of blame attribution in shaping parochial altruism among war-affected refugees
Phaidon Vassiliou
Department of Peace and Conflict Research, Uppsala University (Sweden)
Abstract: Research suggests that war exposure increases parochial altruism, yet existing studies do not consider the extent to which victims direct their blame at ingroup or outgroup perpetrators. We address this gap by leveraging survey experiments conducted among a large and diverse sample of Iraqi and Syrian refugees residing in Turkey. Participants reported greater empathy and altruism toward ingroup compared to outgroup targets. However, parochialism was moderated by blame attribution; with outgroup blame predicting more, and ingroup blame predicting less, ingroup bias in empathy and altruism. The results highlight the role played by victims’ subjective beliefs in shaping prosociality towards ingroup and outgroup members, as well as the emotional mechanisms underlying prosocial behavior following exposure to wartime violence. The findings suggest that blaming ingroup perpetrators for one’s victimization is one mechanism by which war exposure enhances prosociality towards outgroup members in the aftermath of civil wars.
3 – Democracy under pressure: fading support amid rising violence
Nicole Stoelinga
Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods and Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich
Abstract:Although the majority of African countries hold regular elections, survey evidence shows that many citizens see them as ineffective, and commitment to democracy varies both between countries and within countries over time. In various countries there is data indicating that fewer young people are registered and intend to vote. Simultaneously, past two decades are marked by increasing levels of conflict. This paper examines the relationship between conflict and democracy, in particular how exposure to violence influences citizens’ democratic preferences and perceptions of effectiveness of their government. We examine these questions both conditional on the current regime type, and individuals’ in- or out-group status. Using individual level survey data from across several African countries and spanning 20 years, we first provide comprehensive descriptive evidence of the association between conflict and democratic preferences. We then exploit the timing of the survey field work and conflict occurrence for causal identification. We find that conflict exposure has a negative impact on how democratic the regime is perceived to be. We find that conflict exposure increases support for democracy, but only when the country is already more democratic.
4 – Inter-group cooperation and conflict. Experimental evidence from Yemen.
Olivia Bertelli
University Paris-Dauphine; IFPRI
Abstract: A society long-term trajectory after exiting a civil conflict largely depends on the level of aftermath inter-group cooperation. We investigate the level of ingroup and outgroup trust among individuals during an ongoing civil conflict. We focus on Yemen, where the recent conflict has divided the country geographically and made pre-existing regional identities more salient. We develop a mobile phone-based version of a public good game to allow participants from regions on opposite sides of the conflict to play in pairs. We collected two survey rounds and ran lab-in-the field experimental games in 2017 and 2018 with individuals across Yemen. Young, highly educated participants recruited from a national community development initiative were randomly assigned to play games with a partner whose home district is on the same side (ingroup) or from the opposite side (outgroup) of the conflict geographical divide. We merge our data with the ACLED conflict data to explore whether conflict intensity in participants’ home districts affects participants’ behaviors in the games They played. Our results show a higher level of mistrust across the conflict divide coupled with an increase in ingroup preference among participants greatly exposed to conflict. Mistrust towards the outgroup is higher among players from the North of Yemen, where sectarian identity is most clearly tied to the conflict division, and this effect is exacerbated by conflict exposure. These results provide some of the clearest empirical support to date for concerns about the destruction of inter-group cooperation as a result of prolonged conflict.