Simon Hug1 2  , Sandra Penic3

First version: October 2022, this version: Dec 4, 2022
Paper prepared for presentation at the the Political Economy of Democracy and Dictatorship conference (Münster, February 23-25th, 2023)

Exposure to violence and social trust in Eurasia

Exposure to violence and social trust in Eurasia

Abstract

While scholars acknowledge that understanding the social and political consequences of conflict and violence are of utmust importance for post-conflict reconciliation, the nascent literature in this area comes often to quite conflicting conclusions. Thus, whether exposure to violence increases trust through post-traumatic growth, or whether it decreases it through distress or fear is, despite numerous studies, still unclear. We argue that this is largely due to the fact that both in terms of the main independent variable (exposure to violence) and the main dependent variable (trust) most of these studies differ considerably. Drawing on a set of surveys carried out in several Eurasian countries affected by conflict and violence and information on the geographic location of violent events, we assess whether the type of violence (perpepetrator and target) affects social trust in a differences-in-differences design. As expected we can show that the effect of violence is heterogenous.
1  Département de science politique et relations internationales, Université de Genève, 40 Bd du Pont d'Arve, 1211 Genève 4; Switzerland, phone +41 22 379 83 78, email: simon.hug@unige.ch.
2 CefES research fellow, Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca
3  Département de science politique et relations internationales, Université de Genève, 40 Bd du Pont d'Arve, 1211 Genève 4; Switzerland, email: Sandra.PenicJunge@unige.ch TEX by TTH, version 4.12.