How war-related deprivation affects political participation: Evidence from education loss in Liberia
Date
2022-05-01
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Repository Usage Stats
views
downloads
Citation Stats
Abstract
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.
Type
Department
Description
Provenance
Citation
Permalink
Published Version (Please cite this version)
Publication Info
Liu, SX (2022). How war-related deprivation affects political participation: Evidence from education loss in Liberia. Journal of Peace Research, 59(3). pp. 353–366. 10.1177/00223433211019460 Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/28038.
This is constructed from limited available data and may be imprecise. To cite this article, please review & use the official citation provided by the journal.
Collections
Scholars@Duke
Shelley Liu
Shelley Liu is an assistant professor at the Sanford School of Public Policy. Her primary research and teaching focuses on issues relating to conflict, development, and state-building in fragile political contexts. Her ongoing research projects examine (1) how war shapes politics and development, (2) citizen agency in state legibility projects, and (3) the determinants of polarization, politicization, and disengagement. Liu's research has been published in the American Journal of Political Science, Journal of Peace Research, PLOS ONE, Political Science Research and Methods, Politics & Society, and World Politics.
Prior to joining Duke faculty, Liu was an assistant professor at UC Berkeley, Goldman School of Public Policy. She holds a PhD in government from Harvard University (2020).
Unless otherwise indicated, scholarly articles published by Duke faculty members are made available here with a CC-BY-NC (Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial) license, as enabled by the Duke Open Access Policy. If you wish to use the materials in ways not already permitted under CC-BY-NC, please consult the copyright owner. Other materials are made available here through the author’s grant of a non-exclusive license to make their work openly accessible.