Legislating during war: Conflict and politics in Colombia

This paper studies how legislators and their constituents respond to political violence. To do this, I use data from Twitter and roll-call votes, and employ event study and difference-in-differences methods. Tweets from incumbent party legislators and tweets with a "hard-line" language receive higher engagement following rebel attacks. The incumbent party receives higher support in the legislature after attacks, but only when it has a hard-line military policy. The effects documented are large but tend to last less than two weeks. The empirical results are consistent with a political economy model of legislative behaviour in which events that shift median voter preferences, and the presence of rally ‘round the flag effects, elicit different politician responses depending on the policy position of the ruling party. Finally, I identify a set of potentially affected congressional votes, suggesting that these conflict-induced swings in incumbent support can have persistent policy consequences.