IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/iza/izadps/dp8107.html

Trusting Former Rebels: An Experimental Approach to Understanding Reintegration after Civil War

Author

Listed:
  • Bauer, Michal

    (Charles University, Prague)

  • Fiala, Nathan

    (University of Connecticut)

  • Levely, Ian

    (King's College London)

Abstract

The stability of many post-conflict societies rests on the successful reintegration of former soldiers. We examine social capital of former soldiers in Northern Uganda, where the Lord's Resistance Army forcibly recruited tens of thousands of youth during a recent brutal conflict. We use a set of interlocked experiments to study behavior of ex-soldiers jointly with the behavior of receiving communities towards this group. Consistent with theories that highlight the importance of cooperation during war, we find that individual cooperativeness robustly increases with the length of time a person was with the LRA, especially among those who were abducted during early age. Furthermore, parents of former-soldiers are aware of the behavioral difference: they trust ex-soldiers more because they expect them to be more trustworthy. Last, we find no evidence of preference-based discrimination, suggesting that anger is attenuated when communities do not attribute responsibility for committed violence to returning soldiers. Together, the results reveal that the impact of child soldiering on social capital, in contrast to human capital, is not necessarily detrimental and, speculatively, may facilitate reintegration.

Suggested Citation

  • Bauer, Michal & Fiala, Nathan & Levely, Ian, 2014. "Trusting Former Rebels: An Experimental Approach to Understanding Reintegration after Civil War," IZA Discussion Papers 8107, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    • Handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp8107
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://docs.iza.org/dp8107.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • C93 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Field Experiments
    • D03 - Microeconomics - - General - - - Behavioral Microeconomics: Underlying Principles
    • D74 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Conflict; Conflict Resolution; Alliances; Revolutions
    • O12 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Microeconomic Analyses of Economic Development

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp8107. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Holger Hinte (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/izaaade.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.