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How are civilian attitudes toward
combatants affected by wartime victimization? Are these effects
conditional on which combatant inflicted the harm? We investigate
the determinants of wartime civilian attitudes towards combatants
using a survey experiment across 204 villages in five
Pashtun-dominated provinces of Afghanistan --- the heart of the
Taliban insurgency. We use endorsement experiments to indirectly
elicit truthful answers to sensitive questions about support for
different combatants. We demonstrate that civilian attitudes are
asymmetric in nature. Harm inflicted by the International Security
Assistance Force (ISAF) is met with reduced support for ISAF and
increased support for the Taliban, but Taliban-inflicted harm does
not translate into greater ISAF support. We combine a multistage
sampling design with hierarchical modeling to estimate ISAF and
Taliban support at the individual, village, and district levels,
permitting a more fine-grained analysis of wartime attitudes than
previously possible. |
Winner of the Pi Sigma Alpha Award
for the best paper presented at the 2012 Midwest Political Science
Association annual meeting, awarded by the Midwest Political Science
Association. |
Also, see the
World Bank blog post and the
policy brief by E-GAP that discuss this project.
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