Suchergebnisse

While the study of the causes of civil war is a well-established subdiscipline in international relations, the effects of civil war on society remain less understood. Yet, such effects could have crucial implications for long-term stability and democracy in a country after the reaching of a peace agreement. This article contributes to the understanding of the effects of warfare on interethnic relations, notably attitudes of ethno-nationalism. Two hypotheses are tested: first, that the prevalence of ethno-nationalism is higher after than before the war, and second, that individuals who have been directly affected by the war are more nationalist than others. The variation in ethno-nationalism is examined over time, between countries, and between ethnic groups. Three countries that did not experience conflict on their own territory serve as a control group. The effect of individual war exposure is also tested in the analysis. Sources include survey data from the former Yugoslavia in 1989, shortly before the outbreak of war in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, and in 2003, some years after the violence in the region ended. Contrary to common beliefs, the study shows that ethno-nationalism does not necessarily increase with ethnic civil war. The individual war experiences are less important than expected.

What explains support for violence against the state? The surge in survey-based studies in (former) conflict areas has improved our understanding of the determinants of armed conflict. Yet, the potential interaction between grievances and political opportunity structure has received little attention in microlevel studies. Integrating common arguments from the civil war literature with the political behavior tradition, this article argues that perceived political efficacy, a central component of the political opportunity structure, moderates the association between individual and group grievance and people's support for political violence. It represents a first individual-level test of the argument that perceived political opportunity structure and grievances combine to explain internal armed conflict. Using original survey data from Guatemala, Nepal, and Northern Ireland (2016), we find robust empirical evidence that support for violence increases with perceived grievance and decreases with political efficacy; and some evidence of an interaction between the two.

What explains support for violence against the state? The surge in survey-based studies in (former) conflict areas has improved our understanding of the determinants of armed conflict. Yet, the potential interaction between grievances and political opportunity structure has received little attention in microlevel studies. Integrating common arguments from the civil war literature with the political behavior tradition, this article argues that perceived political efficacy, a central component of the political opportunity structure, moderates the association between individual and group grievance and people's support for political violence. It represents a first individual-level test of the argument that perceived political opportunity structure and grievances combine to explain internal armed conflict. Using original survey data from Guatemala, Nepal, and Northern Ireland (2016), we find robust empirical evidence that support for violence increases with perceived grievance and decreases with political efficacy; and some evidence of an interaction between the two.

What explains support for violence against the state? The surge in survey-based studies in (former) conflict areas has improved our understanding of the determinants of armed conflict. Yet, the potential interaction between grievances and political opportunity structure has received little attention in microlevel studies. Integrating common arguments from the civil war literature with the political behavior tradition, this article argues that perceived political efficacy, a central component of the political opportunity structure, moderates the association between individual and group grievance and people's support for political violence. It represents a first individual-level test of the argument that perceived political opportunity structure and grievances combine to explain internal armed conflict. Using original survey data from Guatemala, Nepal, and Northern Ireland (2016), we find robust empirical evidence that support for violence increases with perceived grievance and decreases with political efficacy; and some evidence of an interaction between the two. ; publishedVersion ; This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Background: Exposure to war and conflict increases the risk of mental health problems. Poor living conditions are known to negatively impact mental health. Hypothesis: It is hypothesized that exposure to negative events after armed conflict interacts with past negative experiences, socioeconomic factors and current mental health problems. Methods: A cross-sectional survey was carried out in three contexts of previous internal armed conflict: Nepal, Guatemala and Northern Ireland. Three nationally representative samples were drawn, comprising a net sample of 3,229 respondents. Results: Both recent negative events and past negative events linked to the previous conflicts were found to be associated with elevated risk of post-traumatic stress syndrome (PTSD). Economic marginalization and urban residency also contributed to current risk of PTSD. Conclusions: The results support the study hypothesis that both past and recent negative events in combination with economic marginalization contribute to explain current risk of PTSD. It is necessary both to improve living conditions more broadly and to establish and develop health services that have the capacity to screen, prevent and treat mental health problems also in poor contexts, in particular against a background of previous armed conflict.

In this article we examine attitudes of ethnonationalism in two countries that have experienced ethnic civil war: Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo. We analyse the strength of attitudes of ethnonationalism on the individual level, and how ethnonationalism is related to local ethnic settlement patterns and previous experiences of local inter-ethnic violence. We combine data at the municipality level with data from the South-East European Social Survey Program from 2003 and conduct a multilevel analysis for each case. In both cases, ethnonationalism dominates, but it is stronger in Kosovo than in Bosnia-Herzegovina. We find a clear difference between members of local majorities and minorities, but the effect in Bosnia-Herzegovina is the opposite of the effect in Kosovo. In Bosnia-Herzegovina, members of both minority and majority groups tend to be more ethnonationalist the larger their group. Contrary to our initial expectations, people express less ethnonationalism in municipalities that were more severely hit by violence, whereas in Kosovo no effect of local violence can be found. The more recent conflict and less consolidated institutions in Kosovo may help explain these divergent results. Still, the lack of consistent findings makes it hard to infer beyond the two cases examined.

Peace agreements are negotiated and signed by representatives of the government and the rebels, often after many years of violent conflict, but their ability to transform a war-torn society hinges on the approval of ordinary people. Yet we have little systematic knowledge of what ordinary people think of peace agreements in the long run. This study begins to fill that gap, drawing on a set of comparative public opinion surveys from Guatemala, Nepal, and Northern Ireland, three cases where long civil wars were ended by peace agreements. The peace agreements in these countries have strong popular support, though there is variation across specific provisions. Across these cases, our findings suggest that legacies of violence are not generally associated with long-term support for peace agreements. However, when we look at provisions that grant concessions to the rebels, there is some evidence of lasting legacies.

(Re)gaining citizens' trust is a challenge for post-war governments. Political trust is crucial for understanding both the risk of civil war in the first place and the state-society relationships that emerge afterwards. Peace agreements are tools to stop the fighting, address war's injustices, and provide a blueprint for the state's future – and they do so to varying degrees. Yet we have little systematic knowledge of how people react to such agreements and with what consequences. We argue that in post-war societies, people's perceptions of the strategies aimed at ending the violence and (re)building the state have an enduring impact on people's view of the state. In this study, we examine the association between post-conflict political trust and people's approval of peace agreements analyzing a set of nationally representative, comparative surveys from Guatemala, Nepal, and Northern Ireland, three cases where long civil wars were ended by peace agreements. We find that individuals' approval of the agreement and the perception that it has been implemented are positively associated with political trust, and that accounting for views of the peace agreement substantially improve on conventional explanations for political trust.