Abstract

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.

Replication Archive

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

Related Papers

Kenny, Christopher, Cory McCartan, Tyler Simko, and Kosuke Imai (2024). ``Census officials must constructively engage with independent evaluations.'' Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (Letter), Vol. 121, No. 11, e2321196121.

Kenny, Christopher, Cory McCartan, Shiro Kuriwaki, Tyler Simko, and Kosuke Imai (2024). ``Evaluating Bias and Noise Induced by the U.S. Census Bureau's Privacy Protection Methods.'' Science Advances, Vol 10, No. 18 (May), pp. 1-13.

McCartan, Cory, Tyler Simko, and Kosuke Imai (2024). ``Rejoinder: We Can Improve the Usability of the Census Noisy Measurements File.'' Harvard Data Science Review, Vol. 6, No. 2 (Spring).

McCartan, Cory, Tyler Simko, and Kosuke Imai (2023). ``Making Differential Privacy Work for Census Data Users.'' Harvard Data Science Review, Vol. 5, No. 4 (Fall).

McCartan, Cory, Tyler Simko, and Kosuke Imai (2023). ``Researchers need better access to US Census data.'' Science, Vol. 380, No. 6648 pp. 902-903.

Kenny, Christopher T., Shiro Kuriwaki, Cory McCartan, Evan T.R. Rosenman, Tyler Simko, and Kosuke Imai (2021). ``The Use of Differential Privacy for Census Data and its Impact on Redistricting: The Case of the 2020 U.S. Census.'' Science Advances, Vol. 7, No. 7 (October), pp. 1-17.

Chou, Winston, Kosuke Imai, and Bryn Rosenfeld (2020). ``Sensitive Survey Questions with Auxiliary Information.'' Sociological Methods & Research, Vol. 49, No. 2 (May), pp. 418-454.

Blair, Graeme, Winston Chou, and Kosuke Imai (2019). ``List Experiments with Measurement Error.'' Political Analysis, Vol. 27, No. 4 (October), pp. 455-480.

Hirose, Kentaro, Kosuke Imai, and Jason Lyall (2017). ``Can Civilian Attitudes Predict Insurgent Violence?: Ideology and Insurgent Tactical Choice in Civil War.'' Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 51, No. 1 (January), pp. 47-63. Winner of the Nils Petter Gleditsch Article of the Year Award. Story by Princeton's communication office.

Rosenfeld, Bryn, Kosuke Imai, and Jacob Shapiro (2016). ``An Empirical Validation Study of Popular Survey Methodologies for Sensitive Questions.'' American Journal of Political Science, Vol. 60, No. 3 (July), pp. 783-802.

Blair, Graeme, Kosuke Imai, and Yang-Yang Zhou (2015). ``Design and Analysis of the Randomized Response Technique.'' Journal of the American Statistical Association, Vol. 110, No. 511 (September), pp. 1304-1319.

Lyall, Jason, Yuki Shiraito, and Kosuke Imai (2015). ``Coethnic Bias and Wartime Informing.'' Journal of Politics, Vol. 77, No. 3 (July), p. 833-848.

Imai, Kosuke, Bethany Park, and Kenneth Greene (2015). ``Using the Predicted Responses from List Experiments as Explanatory Variables in Regression Models.'' Political Analysis, Vol. 23, No. 2 (Spring), pp. 180-196. Translated in Portuguese and Reprinted in Revista Debates Vol. 9, No 1.

Blair, Graeme, Kosuke Imai, and Jason Lyall (2014). ``Comparing and Combining List and Endorsement Experiments: Evidence from Afghanistan.'' American Journal of Political Science, Vol. 58, No. 4 (October), pp. 1043-1063.

Blair, Graeme and Kosuke Imai (2012). ``Statistical Analysis of List Experiments.'' Political Analysis, Vol. 20, No. 1 (Winter), pp. 47-77.

Bullock, Will, Kosuke Imai, and Jacob Shapiro (2011). ``Statistical Analysis of Endorsement Experiments: Measuring Support for Militant Groups in Pakistan.'' Political Analysis, Vol. 19, No. 4 (Autumn), pp. 363-384.

Imai, Kosuke (2011). ``Multivariate Regression Analysis for the Item Count Technique.'' Journal of the American Statistical Association, Vol. 106, No. 494 (June), pp. 407-416. (featured article)