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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
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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 

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Footnotes

*

Department of Government and Politics, University of Maryland (email: [email protected]); Department of Political Science, High Point University (email: [email protected]). 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.

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https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/J0O94Y
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