Angry or Weary? The effect of personal violence on attitudes towards peace in Darfur

Does an individual’s exposure to personal violence during civil war tend to make them more “angry” and anti-peace, or more “weary” and pro-peace? Despite the fundamental nature of this question and its potential consequences for conflict duration, termination, and recurrence, it remains largely unanswered. This paper examines the effect of exposure to direct violence faced by Darfurian civilians on their attitudes toward peace four years later, using a novel dataset from a survey of Darfurian refugees in eastern Chad in 2008. Among individuals of a given gender and village, I argue that violence was committed indiscriminately, allowing its causal effect to be estimated. The results support the “weary” hypothesis: more violence leads to stronger reported beliefs that peace is possible and decreased desire to see perpetrators of violence executed. While generalizations to other conflicts would be premature, the implication in this case is that during conflict resolution and reconciliation efforts, it could be particularly fruitful to include those who have been directly harmed, as they may be advocates for peace rather than vengeance. Chad Hazlett, Department of Political Science, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02139. E-mail: [email protected]. I thank Jonathan Loeb, Ethan Siller, Benjamin Naimark-Rowse, and the entire 24 Hours for Darfur research team for their tireless work in generating the dataset used here. Thanks to Jens Hainmueller, Adam Berinsky, Fotini Christia, Daniel Posner, Dan de Kadt, Teppei Yamamoto, and Daniel Hidalgo for invaluable comments and discussion.