Browsing by Subject "political participation"

Now showing 1 - 3 of 3
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    From Politicization to Vigilance: The Post-war Legacies of Wartime Victimization
    (Journal of Conflict Resolution, 2024-01-01) Liu, SX
    Following regime change, how does wartime victimization shape political attitudes and participation in the long run? I argue that it increases post-war political vigilance: greater sensitivity to illiberal politics and poor governance, but with dampened effects on participation under authoritarianism due to greater fear of harm. I examine Protected Villages (PVs) in the Zimbabwe Liberation War (1972–1979). PVs, a Rhodesian counterinsurgency strategy, was a large-scale and violent resettlement program that intensified politics’ role in civilian lives. I map PV-affected areas within pre-war and current-day administrative divisions, and estimate a difference-in-discontinuities regression to identify PVs’ long-run effects. PV-affected areas report greater sensitivity to the country’s illiberal politics and are more critical of poor government performance today. Contrary to existing literature however, I find no evidence of increased political participation and pro-social behavior in the long run, nor hardened support for the ruling party—whom these areas had once supported during war.
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    How war-related deprivation affects political participation: Evidence from education loss in Liberia
    (Journal of Peace Research, 2022-05-01) Liu, SX
    How does civil war affect citizen engagement with democracy? Civilians who live through warfare face numerous disruptions to everyday life that can have permanent effects on political engagement even after peace is achieved. This article analyzes the role of depressed living standards resulting from education loss during the Liberia Civil War as a case study of war-related deprivation. I argue that the negative effects of war on education and economic outcomes clash with the expectations that citizens have for postwar democracy, with adverse consequences for political participation. I demonstrate support for this argument using a mixed methods approach, combining qualitative interviews with census, voting, and Afrobarometer survey data. I leverage a difference-in-differences identification strategy to causally identify the negative impact of conflict on human capital for a generation of young adults, and on the downstream consequences of disruptions in education on political participation. Results indicate that children who were of school age during the civil war are differentially less likely to have any formal schooling by the end of the war. I further find that educational deficiencies disproportionately decrease postwar job prospects, breeding resentment against the newly elected government. This extends to political participation: those who lost out on educational opportunities due to war exhibit lower political engagement and less desire to engage with democratic processes.
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    Institutional Roots of Authoritarian Rule in the Middle East: Civic Legacies of the Islamic Waqf
    (Economic Research Initiatives at Duke (ERID) Working Paper, 2014-06-12) Kuran, T
    In the pre-modern Middle East the closest thing to an autonomous private organization was the Islamic waqf. This non-state institution inhibited political participation, collective action, and rule of law, among other indicators of democratization. It did so through several mechanisms. Its activities were essentially set by its founder, which limited its capacity to meet political challenges. Being designed to provide a service on its own, it could not participate in lasting political coalitions. The waqf’s beneficiaries had no say in evaluating or selecting its officers, and they had trouble forming a political community. Thus, for all the resources it controlled, the Islamic waqf contributed minimally to building civil society. As a core element of Islam’s classical institutional complex, it perpetuated authoritarian rule by keeping the state largely unrestrained. Therein lies a key reason for the slow pace of the Middle East’s democratization process.