Sam Whitt

Civil War, Social Capital and Market Development: Experimental and Survey Evidence on the Negative Consequences of Violence

Recent studies have reported surprising increases in pro-social behavior following exposure to conflict. However, our research provides cautionary evidence of some important detrimental effects of conflict hidden within an overall trend toward increasing certain pro-social preferences. We draw our inferences from experimental and survey evidence we collected from a random sample in post-war Tajikistan. More than a decade after the civil war, which was characterized by insurgency and community infighting, exposure to conflict has opened a significant gap between norms people apply to others in their local communities compared to distant others. Our results show how conflict exposure undermines trust and fairness within local communities, decreases the willingness to engage in impersonal exchange, and reinforces kinship-based norms of morality. The robustness of the results to the use of pre-war controls, village fixed effects and alternative samples suggests that selection into victimization is unlikely to be the factor driving the results.

Social Cooperation and the Problem of the Conflict Gap: Survey and Experimental Evidence from Post-War Tajikistan

Our research provides experimental and survey evidence on the pro-social behavior (trust, reciprocity, a sense of fairness) and preferences for anonymous market transactions of former combatants. Our results, from a random sample in post-war Tajikistan, show that trust, reciprocity, generosity (dictator giving) are lowest among those respondents reporting having fought during the 1992-1997 Tajik civil war or anytime since its end, especially when the experimental treatment matches individuals with anonymous others from their local community. Consistent with the behavioral results, fighting is associated with lower trust towards any group outside the direct family, a lower willingness to engage in impersonal exchange and stronger kinship-based norms of morality. Replicating previous literature results, we find that ex-combatants are more likely to participate in groups and collective action but we caution that this may just capture political opposition, just as participating in combat did. Overall, our results point to a lasting “conflict gap” between combatants and non-combatants, even long after the end of the civil war, which question the rehabilitation of combatants.

Social Norms in the Aftermath of Ethnic Violence

This study considers prospects for the revitalization of social norms after ethnic violence using a behavioral experiment in postwar Bosnia. In the experiment, subjects are asked to distribute a ten-unit monetary sum between two anonymous recipients of random ethnicity. The results indicate a surprisingly high number of egalitarian distributions across ethnicity, which is interpreted as evidence of a norm of fairness. Discriminating behavior in the experiment is explained as a product of ethnic parochialism (rewarding co-ethnics and punishing non-co-ethnics). Overall, the experiment speaks to the resiliency of an important aspect of pro-social behavior after violence—impartiality in the treatment of others.

International Peacekeeping and Positive Peace Evidence from Kosovo

To what extent can international peacekeeping promote micro-foundations for positive peace after violence? Drawing on macro-level peacekeeping theory, our approach uses novel experimental methods to illustrate how monitoring and enforcement by a neutral third party could conceivably enhance prosocial behavior between rival groups in a tense, postconflict peacekeeping environment. Using a laboratory experiment in postwar Kosovo, we find that third-party enforcement is more effective at promoting norms of trust between ethnic Serbs and Albanians than monitoring alone or no intervention at all. We then consider real-world extensions for building positive peace across different intervention environments. Using a dictator experiment that exploits heterogeneity in NATO peacekeeping in different regions of Kosovo, our inferences about monitoring and enforcement appear robust to ecological conditions in the field.

The evolution of prosociality and parochialism after violence

To what extent can prosocial norms (re-)emerge among rival groups following intense intergroup conflict? One school of thought posits that violence can strengthen intragroup bonding norms, entrenching parochialism and sustaining in-group biases. However, recent studies suggest that intergroup bridging norms can also improve once conflict ends. Our research offers insights into how prosocial bridging vs. parochial bonding norms evolve after violence. To measure dynamics of social norms, we employ surveys and dictator game experiments with ethnic treatments which we administered in Bosnia in 2003 and replicated in 2013 using well-balanced samples of ethnic Bosniaks, Croats, and Serbs in a difference-in-difference research design. We find that prosocial bridging norms improve over time. However, we also observe persistent parochial biases in terms of how in-groups are perceived and treated relative to out-groups. Regression analysis shows that intergroup bridging norms are more salient among individuals who reside in ethnically intermixed, institutionally integrated regions of Bosnia, including those who experienced traumatic forms of wartime victimization. Covariate matching on internal displacement and victimization reduces concerns that our results are driven by selection effects. Our findings lend support to the view that integration and intergroup contact among former rivals increases prosociality while partition and social segregation encourage parochialism.

Social Norms after Conflict Exposure and Victimization by Violence: Experimental Evidence from Kosovo

An emerging literature points to heterogeneous effects of violence on social norms and preferences in conflict-ridden societies with implications for economic development and state-building. We consider how effects of conflict exposure and victimization could be impacted by observable and unobservable in-group/out-group divisions. Our research uses novel lab-in-the-field experiments to gauge norms for pro-social behavior in the aftermath of ethnic violence. Based on experimental data from stratified random samples of ethnic Albanians and Serbs, the study finds strong evidence of pro-social norms toward ethnically defined in-groups, but not toward out-groups. Examining individual variation in conflict exposure, we find that increasing victimization by violence further enhances in-group parochialism and out-group bias. The indiscriminate nature of violence during ethnic cleansing alleviates many endogeneity and selection concerns about victimization. Overall, our results provide evidence that pro-social effects of violence may be contingent on scope conditions such as the salience of in-group/out-group ties and boundaries.

Fight or Flight in Civil War? Evidence from Rebel-Controlled Syria

Faced with prospects of a civil war escalating on their doorstep, ordinary people must decide whether to take up arms and join the fight, to stay in place and seek shelter in confines of the conflict zone, or to flee their homes in search of safer locations. Using original survey and experimental data from the ongoing conflict in Syria, we try to understand how people facing conflict make critical life-and-death decisions. Drawing on a range of hypotheses from the existing literature, we find compelling evidence that in-group ties and grievance motivations explain fight vs. flight decision-making at the individual level. Using well-balanced samples of over 300 Free Syrian Army and Islamist fighters, civilian non-combatants, and externally displaced refugees from actively contested regions of Syria, we observe that people with strong in-group bonds and out-group aversions are more likely to stay and fight. In contrast, refugees are far less revenge-seeking and more willing to negotiate for peace. Overall, our research suggests that heterogeneous preferences and motivations within subpopulations of civil war participants can create serious coordination problems with practical implications for conflict duration and outcomes.