QoG lunch seminar with Abbey Steele

Authors: Abbey Steele, Sebastián Pantoja Barrios, Alejandra Ortiz Ayala

Abstract:

The legacies of civil war violence are associated with diverse political and economic outcomes. A common assumption in this literature is stable populations over time, even though civilian displacement represents an outsize share of wartime victimization. We argue that diverse community composition as the result of displacement is likely to influence trust among neighbors and between citizens and the state. We expect individuals living in communities where more diverse internally displaced people IDPs have arrived to report lower trust in their neighbors, because they are less likely to know each other and more likely to encounter different norms. However, we expect that diverse communities will have the opposite impact on individuals’ reported trust in state institutions, because residents are more likely to rely on them to intervene than in communities with shared norms and social trust. To test these expectations, we analyze a household survey across 16 regions tar-

geted for peacebuilding in Colombia (PDETs), which comprise communities that are on average 50% IDPs. We find evidence that more diverse communities as the result of arriving IDPs are associated with lower reported trust in neighbors, but does not translate into higher political trust. We further test related mechanisms of contact with state institutions, and find that it is sensitive to our measure of diversity: places with higher ethnic diversity as the result of arriving IDPs are more likely to rely on state institutions for conflict resolution, but less likely to report contacting local community and political leaders.