State Violence and Post-conflict Electoral Support for the Left in Guatemala

• In Event: New Research on Resistance and Repression

Abstract

We investigate the long-term political consequences of indiscriminate counterinsurgent violence. Whereas previous research mostly focused on the attitudes of individual victims to the perpetrators of violence, we examine the effect of counterinsurgency campaigns on post-conflict electoral support for the insurgents at the community level. We argue that collectivized memories of indiscriminate state violence foster the formation of pro-insurgent collective identities as victimized communities perceive such brutal state responses as evidence of the insurgency's legitimacy. Yet, this effect depends on i) the victims' social embeddedness, and ii) the strength of present-day communal bonds associated with the presence of sizable ethnic minority populations in a community. To test these arguments, we analyze the effect of state violence during the Guatemalan civil war on post-war electoral support for the country's revolutionary Left at the municipal level. Using three different strategies to address concerns of endogeneity, we find robust empirical support for our arguments.

Author

• Manuel Vogt, University College London