Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-m8qmq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-23T08:32:16.526Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

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

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 April 2016

Vera Mironova  and
Sam Whitt
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

An emerging literature points to the heterogeneous effects of violence on social norms and preferences in conflict-ridden societies. This article considers how responses to violence could be affected by in-group/out-group divisions. The research uses lab-in-the-field experiments to gauge norms for pro-social behavior in the aftermath of ethnic violence in post-war Kosovo. The study finds that one set of treatments (ethnicity) captures a negative legacy of violence on parochialism, while another (local/non-local) shows stronger evidence of pro-sociality and norm recovery. Examining individual variation in conflict exposure, it finds that victims of violence are more biased against ethnic out-groups and less pro-social to others outside of their local community. Balancing and matching on observables helps alleviate concerns that the results are driven by selection bias on victimization. Overall, the results suggest that the effects of violence may be contingent on the salience of in-group/out-group cues and boundaries.

Type
Articles
Information
British Journal of Political Science , Volume 48 , Issue 3 , July 2018 , pp. 749 - 765
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press 2016 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

Department of Government and Politics, University of Maryland (email: vmironov@umd.edu); Department of Political Science, High Point University (email: swhitt@highpoint.edu). We would like to thank the following people for their invaluable assistance in making our fieldwork possible: Alessandra Cassar, Pauline Grosjean, Rick Wilson, Uliks Osmani, Arlinda Ahmeti, Sasha Ćirković, Remzije Istrefi, Ardiana Gashi and Visar Sadiku. We thank the editor and anonymous reviewers for their comments and support. Any errors are ours alone. The research was supported by a grant from the US Fulbright Program. Data replication sets are available at http://dataverse.harvard.edu/dataverse/BJPolS and online appendices are available at http://dx.doi.org/doi:10.1017/S0007123416000028.

References

Abbink, Klaus. 2012. Laboratory Experiments on Conflict. In Oxford Handbook of the Economics of Peace and Conflict, edited by Michelle R. Garfinkel and Stergios Skaperdas, 532–556. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Allport, Gordon W. 1954. The Nature of Prejudice. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.Google Scholar
Bauer, Michal, Cassar, Alessandra, Chytilová, Julie, and Henrich, Joseph. 2013. War’s Enduring Effects on the Development of Egalitarian Motivations and In-Group Biases. Psychological Science 25 (1):47–57.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Beber, Bernd, Roessler, Philip, and Scacco, Alexandra. 2014. Intergroup Violence and Political Attitudes: Evidence from a Dividing Sudan. The Journal of Politics 76 (3):649–665.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Becchetti, Leonardo, Conzo, Pierluigi, and Romeo, Alessandro. 2014. Violence, Trust, and Trustworthiness: Evidence from a Nairobi Slum. Oxford Economic Papers 66 (1):283–305.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bellows, John, and Miguel, Edward. 2009. War and Local Collective Action in Sierra Leone. Journal of Public Economics 93 (11):1144–1157.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Berg, Joyce, Dickhaut, John, and McCabe, Kevin. 1995. Trust, Reciprocity, and Social History. Games and Economic Behavior 10 (1):122–142.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bernhard, Helen, Fischbacher, Urs, and Fehr, Ernst. 2006. Parochial Altruism in Humans. Nature 442:912–915.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Blattman, Christopher. 2009. From Violence to Voting: War and Political Participation in Uganda. American Political Science Review 103 (2):231–247.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blattman, Christopher, and Annan, Jeannie. 2010. The Consequences of Child Soldiering. The Review of Economics and Statistics 92 (4):882–898.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blattman, Christopher, and Miguel, Edward. 2010. Civil War. Journal of Economic Literature 48 (1):3–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bowles, Samuel. 2008. Being Human: Conflict: Altruism’s Midwife. Nature 456:326–327.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bowles, Samuel. 2009. Did Warfare Among Ancestral Hunter-Gatherers Affect the Evolution of Human Social Behaviors? Science 324 (5932):1293–1298.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Brakman, Steven, Garretsen, Harry, and Schramm, Marc. 2004. The Strategic Bombing of Cities in Germany in World War II and its Impact on City Growth. Journal of Economic Geography 4 (1):1–18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brown, Rupert. 2000. Social Identity Theory: Past Achievements, Current Problems and Future Challenges. European Journal of Social Psychology 30 (6):745–778.3.0.CO;2-O>CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brubaker, Rogers, and Laitin, David D.. 1998. Ethnic and Nationalist Violence. Annual Review of Sociology 24 (1):423–452.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Camerer, Colin. 2003. Behavioral Game Theory: Experiments in Strategic Interaction. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Caselli, Francesco, and Coleman, Wilbur John. 2013. On the Theory of Ethnic Conflict. Journal of the European Economic Association 11 (1):161–192.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cassar, Alessandra, Grosjean, Pauline, and Whitt, Sam. 2013. Legacies of Violence: Trust and Market Development. Journal of Economic Growth 18 (3):285–318.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chen, Yan, and Li, Sherry Xin. 2009. Group Identity and Social Preferences. The American Economic Review 99 (1):431–457.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Choi, Jung-Kyoo, and Bowles, Samuel. 2007. The Coevolution of Parochial Altruism and War. Science 318:636–640.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Cikara, Mina, Bruneau, Emile G., and Saxe, Rebecca R.. 2011. Us and Them: Intergroup Failures of Empathy. Current Directions in Psychological Science 20 (3):149–153.Google Scholar
Coleman, James S. 1988. Social Capital in the Creation of Human Capital. American Journal of Sociology 94 (1):95–120.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Collier, Paul, and Hoeffler, Anke. 2004. Greed and Grievance in Civil War. Oxford Economic Papers 56 (4):563–595.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Coupé, Tom, and Obrizan, Maksym. 2016. Violence and Political Outcomes in Ukraine – Evidence from Sloviansk and Kramatorsk. Journal of Comparative Economics 44 (1):201–212.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Davis, Donald R., and Weinstein, David E.. 2001. Bones, Bombs and Break Points: The Geography of Economic Activity No. Working Paper 8517. Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Engel, Christoph. 2011. Dictator Games: A Meta Study. Experimental Economics 14 (4):583–610.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Everett, Jim A. C., Faber, Nadira S., and Crockett, Molly. 2015. Preferences and Beliefs in Ingroup Favoritism. Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience 9 (15):1–21.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Fearon, James D., and Laitin, David D.. 2003. Ethnicity, Insurgency, and Civil War. American Political Science Review 97 (1):75–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fehr, Ernst, and Fischbacher, Uri. 2003. The Nature of Human Altruism. Nature 425:785–791.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Fershtman, Chaim, and Gneezy, Uri. 2001. Discrimination in a Segmented Society: An Experimental Approach. The Quarterly Journal of Economics 116 (1):351–377.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fukuyama, Francis. 1995. Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity. New York: The Free Press.Google Scholar
Gilligan, Michael J., Pasquale, Benjamin J., and Samii, Cyrus. 2014. Civil War and Social Cohesion: Lab‐in‐the‐Field Evidence from Nepal. American Journal of Political Science 58 (3):604–619.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gneezy, Ayelet, and Fessler, Daniel M. T.. 2012. Conflict, Sticks and Carrots: War Increases Prosocial Punishments and Rewards. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 279:219–223.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Greif, Avner. 1993. Contract Enforceability and Economic Institutions in Early Trade: The Maghribi Traders’ Coalition. The American Economic Review 83 (3):525–548.Google Scholar
Habyarimana, James, Humphreys, Macartan, Posner, Daniel N., and Weinstein, Jeremy M.. 2007. Why Does Ethnic Diversity Undermine Public Goods Provision? American Political Science Review 101 (4):709–725.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Human Rights Watch. 2004. Failure to Protect: Anti-Minority Violence in Kosovo, March 2004, 26 July 2004, D1606. Available from http://www.refworld.org/docid/412eec8b4.html. Accessed on 24 February 2016.Google Scholar
Iacus, Stefano M., King, Gary, and Porro, Giuseppe. 2012. Causal Inference Without Balance Checking: Coarsened Exact Matching. Political Analysis 20 (1):1–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. 2006. Case Information on Slobodan Milosevic (IT-02-54). Available from http://www.icty.org/case/slobodan_milosevic/4. Accessed 24 February 2016.Google Scholar
Johnson, Noel D., and Mislin, Alexandra A.. 2011. Trust Games: A Meta-Analysis. Journal of Economic Psychology 32 (5):865–889.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Judah, Tim. 2002. Kosovo: War and Revenge. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Kagel, John H., and Roth, Alvin E., eds. 1995. The Handbook of Experimental Economics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kalyvas, Stathis N. 2006. The Logic of Violence in Civil War. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
King, Ian, and Mason, Whit. 2006. Peace at Any Price. How the World Failed in Kosovo. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
LeVine, Robert A., and Campbell, Donald T.. 1972. Ethnocentrism: Theories of Conflict, Ethnic Attitudes, and Group Behavior. New York: John Wiley.Google Scholar
Miguel, Edward, and Roland, Gerard. 2011. The Long-Run Impact of Bombing Vietnam. Journal of Development Economics 96 (1):1–15.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
North Atlantic Treaty Organization. 1999. Statement on Kosovo. 23 April Press Release S-1(99)62. Available from http://www.nato.int/docu/pr/1999/p99-062e.htm Accessed on 2/24/2016.Google Scholar
North, Douglass C. 1990. Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nunn, Nathan, and Wantchekon, Leonard. 2011. The Slave Trade and the Origins of Mistrust in Africa. American Economic Review 101 (7):3221–3252.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Oosterbeek, Hessel, Sloof, Randolph, and Kuilen, Gijs Van De. 2004. Cultural Differences in Ultimatum Game Experiments: Evidence from a Meta-Analysis. Experimental Economics 7 (2):171–188.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ostrom, Elinor. 1990. Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Parson, Erwin Randolph. 1985. Post-Traumatic Accelerated Cohesion: Its Recognition and Management in Group Treatment of Vietnam Veterans. Group 9 (4):10–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Petersen, Roger. 2002. Understanding Ethnic Violence: Fear, Hatred, and Resentment in Twentieth-Century Eastern Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Petersen, Roger. 2011. Western Intervention in the Balkans: The Strategic Use of Emotion in Conflict. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Posen, Barry R. 1993. The Security Dilemma and Ethnic Conflict. Survival 35 (1):27–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Posner, Daniel N. 2004. The Political Salience of Cultural Difference: Why Chewas and Tumbukas are Allies in Zambia and Adversaries in Malawi. American Political Science Review 98 (4):529–545.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Putnam, Robert. 1993. Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Rohner, Dominic, Thoenig, Mathias, and Zilibotti, Fabrizio. 2013. Seeds of Distrust: Conflict in Uganda. Journal of Economic Growth 18 (3):217–252.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sambanis, Nicholas, Schulhofer-Wohl, Jonah, and Shayo, Moses. 2012. Parochialism as a Central Challenge in Counterinsurgency. Science 336 (6083):805–808.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Sambanis, Nicholas, and Shayo, Moses. 2013. Social Identification and Ethnic Conflict. American Political Science Review 107 (2):294–325.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Singer, Joel David, and Small, Melvin. 1972. The Wages of War, 1816–1965: A Statistical Handbook. New York: Wiley.Google Scholar
Tajfel, Henri, and Turner, John C.. 1979. An Integrative Theory of Intergroup Conflict. The Social Psychology of Intergroup Relations 33:47.Google Scholar
United Nations Security Resolution 1199. (23 September 1998). UN Security Council S/RES/1199 (1998):1–5. Available at http://www.un.org/en/ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=S/RES/1199(1998). Accessed 24 February 2016.Google Scholar
United States Department of State. 1999. Ethnic Cleansing in Kosovo: An Accounting. Available from http://www.state.gov/www/global/human_rights/kosovoii/homepage.html#exeAccessed on 2/24/2016.Google Scholar
van der Kolk, Bessel A. 1987. Psychological Trauma. Arlington, VA: American Psychiatric Publishing, Inc.Google Scholar
Voors, Maarten J., Nillesen, Eleonora E. M., Verwimp, Philip, Bulte, Erwin H., Lensink, Robert, and Van Soest, Daan P.. 2012. Violent Conflict and Behavior: A Field Experiment in Burundi. The American Economic Review 102 (2):941–964.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Whitt, Sam, and Wilson, Rick K.. 2007. The Dictator Game, Fairness and Ethnicity in Postwar Bosnia. American Journal of Political Science 51 (3):655–668.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Whitt, Sam. 2014. Social Norms in the Aftermath of Ethnic Violence Ethnicity and Fairness in Non-costly Decision Making. Journal of Conflict Resolution 58 (1):93–119.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zelmer, Jennifer. 2003. Linear Public Goods Experiments: A Meta-Analysis. Experimental Economics 6 (3):299–310.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Supplementary material: Link

Mironova and Whitt Dataset

Dataset

https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/J0O94Y
Link
Supplementary material: PDF

Mironova and Whitt supplementary material

Online Appendix

Download Mironova and Whitt supplementary material(PDF)
PDF 2 MB