War experiences,economic grievances,and political participation in postwar societies: An empirical analysis of Kosovo

Abstract

This article contributes to the debate evolving around the political legacy of armed conflict. We evaluate the effect of war experiences during the 1998–1999 civil war in Kosovo on various modes of political participation. We find that war victims are on average more likely to participate in non-institutionalized forms of participation such as signing petitions and to participate in protests in the postwar era. In addition, we show that the impact of war experiences on political protest is contingent upon the postwar situation. War experiences are linked to protest behavior when a survivor is economically disadvantaged after the war. However, war experiences lose their impact on protest behavior when people do not encounter economic grievances in the postwar environment. In this vein, exploring the postwar context enriches our understanding of the political legacy of war victimization.

Keywords

Civil war grievances Kosovo political legacy political participation survey data

Introduction

What is the political legacy of a violent civil war? Do victims get new priorities and meaningful ways to engage, or are they stuck in a state of war-related distress inhibiting a political action-centered response? Although the field of research exploring the politico-sociological consequences of civil war is growing, our knowledge on the connection of violent conflict and political participation still is very limited (Adhvaryu and Fenske, 2014; Bauer et al., 2016; Bellows and Miguel, 2009; Blattman, 2009; De Luca and Verpoorten, 2015; Grosjean, 2014).¹ However, “insofar as civil wars have an intrinsic political dimension, it is more than plausible to think that war experiences and related psychological distress will have political consequences” (Balcells, 2012: 314).

Regarding the link between war experiences and political participation, two competing perspectives dominate the literature. While the conventional expectation is that experiences of civil war would inevitably lead to a lapse into political apathy, an emerging subset of the literature emphasizes the positive development of political life following victimization (Bateson, 2012: 571; Blattman, 2009: 231).

Our study supports the latter view and presents strong evidence of a positive link between wartime victimization and non-institutionalized forms of participation, i.e. signing petitions and participating in protests in postwar Kosovo. Drawing from different strains of the literature, we argue that individuals exposed to traumatic war-related events feel stronger and more capable of handling challenges or cope through participation. In this vein, the turn to political activism is due to a combination of personal strength and instrumental, emotional and expressive reasons. It has to be noted, however, that the postwar situation moderates the impact of war experiences. Referring to grievance theory, we show that the impact of war experience on protest is intensified for war victims experiencing economic hardship. In contrast to this, material resources let war experiences lose their influence on protest.

Against this backdrop, our analysis of a war-torn society makes three important contributions to the literature. First, it contributes to a large body of literature addressing the foundations of political participation which hitherto predominantly focused on stable and peaceful societies. Second, we contribute to a growing research field on the political legacy of civil war by distinguishing between institutionalized and non-institutionalized forms of political behavior. Third, and most notably, we differ from existing studies by taking the postwar situation into account in the analysis of the impact of war experiences. To date, the postwar environment has been largely neglected in the literature concerned with the politico-behavioral consequences of civil war. However, as our results show, the economic situation of the war victim is indeed highly relevant for the study of postwar political behavior. In other words, the mere analysis of war experiences does not suffice to understand postwar political behavior. Different postwar contexts may intensify or weaken the positive or negative impact of war experiences on political behavior.

We confine our analysis to the postwar era in Kosovo, where the pattern of violence is well known and unanimously has been described as indiscriminate (HRW, 2001: 116; ICG, 2001: 67–74; Judah, 2000: 250; Kalyvas, 2008: 405; Kalyvas and Kocher, 2007: 188; UNSC, 1998: 3).

Background: civil war in Kosovo

The conflict in Kosovo has long historic roots. However, from 1998 to 1999, violent confrontations between the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) and the Serbian police and Yugoslav Army escalated. In the mid 1990s, the rebel group Kosovo Liberation Army, KLA, started to oppose what they viewed as an oppressive Serbian regime. The KLA relied on small “hit-and-run attacks”, conducted by autonomously operating cells of three to five persons (Mulaj, 2008: 1112). Being unable to distinguish between fighters and civilians, the Yugoslav Army often expelled entire villages in response to KLA attacks (HRW, 2001: 115; Rathfelder, 2009: 201–203). Further, Serbia hoped to secure its control of Kosovo by shifting the ethnic balance of the region (HRW, 2001: 110). As the OSCE Verification Mission (OSCE-KVM, OSCE Verification Mission, 1999: 172) has noted, Kosovo Albanians were often tortured or killed “in full public view to enforce the departure of the other villagers”. Thus, all qualitative accounts, non-governmental organization reports and fact-finding missions agree that ethnic denomination was the most important predictor of victimization (HRW, 2001: 116; ICG, 2001: 67–74; Judah, 2000: 250; Kalyvas, 2008: 405; Kalyvas and Kocher, 2007: 188; UNSC, 1998: 3). By June 1999, more than 800,000 persons had fled Kosovo for neighboring countries and an estimated 500,000 were internally displaced (Beurmann, 2008: 46; Pavkovic, 2010: 263). Almost the entire population was affected by experiences of killings, violence and expulsion, with about 60,000 totally destroyed homes and the death of up to 13,000 individuals (Seifert, 2015). Violence was used against Kosovo Albanian civilians indiscriminately, including beatings, rapes and executions. Further, men were also randomly detained and beaten, and many disappeared (Booth, 2001: 61). Even though the vast majority of victims of violence were Kosovo Albanians, Serbs and other non-Albanians suffered from violence in the course of and the period immediately after the war. The KLA and, after the war, armed Albanian civilians looted their properties, kidnapped, beat and even killed “perpetrators and collaborators” (ICG, 1999, 2001; Judah, 2000; OSCE, 2003).

Civil war and political participation: theory and hypotheses

We are interested in assessing the effects of this surge in violence in Kosovo on different measures of political participation, defined as “the voluntary activity of citizens to influence political decisions” (Hooghe and Quintelier, 2013: 221). To begin with, war experiences can cause long-lasting psychological problems (Hong and Kang, 2015; Hooghe and Quintelier, 2013: 221; Ringdal and Ringdal, 2012; Ringdal et al., 2008). War-related distress as a specific form of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is still quite prevalent in Kosovo (Ai et al., 2002; Kashdan et al., 2009; Kijewski and Freitag, 2016; Priebe et al., 2010; Wenzel et al., 2006). More than one-third of Kosovo’s population has depressive symptoms while 33% of the fathers and 28% of the mothers in local families still suffer from war-induced PTSD (Schick et al., 2013: 5). Affected individuals typically exhibit feelings of detachment from others, lower self-efficacy and anxiety (Ehlers and Clark, 2000).

These more immediate psychological tendencies can spill over to other areas of cognitive, emotional and social functioning. War victims have a hard time perceiving themselves as active agents capable of leading a worthwhile life and instead feel trapped in a state of distress (Basoglu et al., 2005: 584; Blevins et al., 2016). According to conventional wisdom, these negative emotions, in turn, narrow down the set of actions available in victims’ minds and make them less likely to be interested in politics.

Moreover, psychological problems consume a considerable amount of emotional energy and time. In this way, victims may experience a “resource drain” that diverts energy from social and political activities (Kashdan et al., 2009: 193). Further, the feeling that cruel experiences are the result of a senseless power struggle between political elites could undermine trust in institutions and confidence in the justice system. Such a “process of pathological learning” would make mistrust a general rule of thumb that helps to avert future harm (Blanco and Ruiz, 2013; De Juan and Pierskalla, 2016; Genschel and Schlichte, 1998: 112; Grosjean, 2014: 443; Nunn and Wantchekon, 2011: 3242). On top of this, war-induced social mistrust arguably corrupts the motivation to contribute to public life through participation. To sum up, this evidence suggests that war experiences should be related to lower likelihoods of political participation:

Hypothesis 1: Civil war experiences are related to lower levels of political participation.

Contrary to the dominant assumption that war victims withdraw from public life, recent studies have demonstrated the opposite and that people become more participatory after exposure to violence. Research in the former Yugoslavia (Kosovo, Bosnia–Herzegovina, Croatia) has shown that war victims enjoyed growth in psychological, schooling and labor market outcomes—indicating that war-affected individuals can continue a relatively normal life (Kecmanovic, 2013; Krizmanić and Kolesarić, 1996; Searing et al., 2013). Furthermore, war victims have been found to have increased rates of voting, community leadership and civic engagement (Bellows and Miguel, 2009; Blattman, 2009; Grosjean, 2014). One possible explanation for this increase in participatory behavior is that human beings, instead of falling into a negative psychological state, have an ability to bounce back or even grow from trauma caused by stressful events. Individuals may establish new strength and positive changes through an experience or period of suffering. Here, individuals replace or modify their assumptions, which were shattered by the experiences of trauma, with new ones about their surroundings, i.e. society and their political environment in general. Evidence suggests that individuals regularly re-evaluate their lives and perceive positive changes in themselves after traumatic events, better known as posttraumatic growth (Bauer et al., 2016; Calhoun and Tedeschi, 2014; Hobfoll et al., 2007; Rohner et al., 2013; Tedeschi and Calhoun, 1996). Moreover, personal growth and development resulting from traumatic experiences may lead to more participation in public life (Blattman, 2009; Hirsch-Hoefler et al., 2016).

Beyond posttraumatic growth, the literature on crime victimization offers alternative factors explaining victims’ political participation (Bateson, 2012). First, victims’ activism could arise for instrumental reasons. In this regard, victims seek support from elected officials or lobby for policy changes that are related to the crimes they have experienced. In addition, victims’ activism also has emotional motivations. Victims may turn to politics because political activism lessens the emotional effects of victimization. In this case, to mitigate their long-lasting traumatic experiences, victims have to channel their agony into meaningful action (Hobfoll et al., 2007). By participating in public life, one can escape the state of helplessness and feel empowered by this action. Moreover, anger can be a powerful emotional catalyst for participation (Klandermans and van Stekelenburg, 2013; Valentino et al., 2009, 2011). Feelings of anger are a common part of response to traumatic events and to situations in which people have become victims (National Center for PTSD, 2015). Individuals suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, for example, may experience that they get “stuck” in a survival modus in which all stress factors lead to full activation, even when faced with undramatic events. By managing the external and internal demands, participation may be seen as a way to cope with anger, thus challenging and regulating the boundaries of personal resources (Garnefski et al., 2001; Lazarus and Folkman, 1984). Dissatisfaction with the current state of affairs may represent one trigger of anger among victims of violence, making them particularly prone to participate. Finally, victims might participate in politics for expressive reasons, because this kind of activism helps them to define and reaffirm their identities. Reinventing themselves as survivors, organizers and leaders, victims might reconstruct a sense of control and agency. This is consistent with the findings that war victims tend to identify with their respective in-group (Bauer et al., 2014; Becchetti et al., 2014; Rohner et al., 2013) and develop their political identities and preferences accordingly (Balcells, 2012). Therefore, the war in Kosovo might have reinforced existing identities, propelling victims towards participation in political and social groups. Accordingly, to summarize our theoretical arguments, we challenge the view that civil war experiences are related to lower levels of political participation and develop our second hypothesis:

Hypothesis 2: Civil war experiences are related to higher levels of political participation.

Data, measurement and methodology

In the following sections, we examine the relationship between civil war experiences and political participation empirically. The individual-level data stems from the Life in Transition Survey II, a cross-country survey conducted by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the World Bank in 2010. It surveys 39,000 households in 34 countries. The sample for Kosovo contains 1091 respondents above the age of 18 years from 28 municipalities. Respondents are selected through a two-stage selection procedure, with a random selection of households in a first step, followed by a random selection of individuals within those households. Owing to missing values, our final sample contains between 939 and 972 individuals.

Based on Teorell et al. (2007) our dependent variable is measured using a variety of forms of political participation. For institutionalized forms of participation, we examine voting and party membership. Voting was recorded by asking the respondents “Did you vote in the most recent (a) local level or (b) parliamentary election?” We create a dummy that takes on a value of 1 if an individual has voted in at least one of these elections. Party membership is measured by whether an individual has joined (1) a party or not (0). In addition, we estimate non-institutionalized forms of participation with the question “How likely are you to (a) attend a lawful demonstration, (b) participate in a strike, (c) sign petitions?” The answer categories are 1 (have done), 2 (might do) and 3 (would never do). We create a protest dummy that takes on the value of 1 if an individual has at least once attended a demonstration or a strike. We code petitions in exactly the same way.

To gauge individual war experience as our main independent variable, we create a factor based on confirmatory analysis on the individual responses to questions about three different war experiences (see Kijewski and Freitag, 2016): whether any member of the respondent’s household was killed, they or a household member were physically injured or had to move because of the conflict. Scholars disagree on which kinds of war experiences are the most powerful ones on individual attitude and behavior. Whereas some scholars view displacement to have the strongest impact on individual attitude and behavior, because of the accumulation of psychological and material loss during displacement (Savjak, 2000: 46), others highlight the death of a family member as one of the most transformative events that may occur in people’s lives (Cardozo et al., 2000: 575; Ringdal et al., 2008: 66; Ringdal and Ringdal, 2012: 41).² Instead of using one single indicator for war experience, we create a factor of war experience based on confirmatory factor analysis on the responses to each of these three types of war experiences in order to capture traumatic war experiences. The single war experiences have standardized loadings of 0.66, 0.68 and 0.60, which is much higher than the general rule of thumb for salient factor loadings of 0.30 (Brown, 2006: 130). The factor loadings were statistically significant at p < 0.001 and the common goodness-of-fit indices indicate that the CFA solution fits the data well.³

An essential econometric concern is the likelihood that the correlation between war experience and political participation is driven by some omitted variable that exerts a confounding effect, rather than reflecting a causal impact (Bauer et al., 2016). Following the literature we try to alleviate this problem with a number of approaches (Bauer et al., 2016; Bellows and Miguel, 2009). First, we control for selection on observable characteristics such as gender, age, ethnicity, education and region of origin. The educational level of victims’ parents may also serve as a proxy for pre-war levels of political participation, as children’s educational level (and hence their willingness to participate) is often related to their social background. Therefore, by controlling for father’s level of education, we can mitigate the impact of possible non-random victimization on our results.⁴ Ethnicity is best captured by the mother tongue of respondents and is also a proxy for religion. We coded Turkish (N = 1), Bosnian (N = 1) and Kosovar individuals into one category and made Serbs the reference category. The region of origin splits Kosovo into five areas (North, Northwest, Center, Southeast, Southwest).

Second, we verify that our model is robust to the inclusion of district-level fixed-effects. Thus, we eliminate the bias possibly caused by pre-existing spatial variation in political participation. Specifically, we re-run our models with 28 municipal dummies, the smallest geographic unit available.

Finally, we re-estimate our effects among sub-samples in which self-selection is far less likely to be the case. More politically active persons might have self-selected into victimization, which would confound prewar levels of engagement with the impacts of war (Wang et al., 2010: 11). Therefore, we re-run our models among individuals who were not eligible (or at least far less likely) to participate before the war because they had not yet reached majority age. All variables are included in our baseline logistic regression model, which estimates the following equation:

P_{i r} = α + β_{1} W_{i r} + β_{2} {C'}_{i r} + γ_{r} + ε_{i r}

where $P_{i r}$ is one of the four binary participation outcomes of individual i living in region r. W indicates whether an individual was exposed to war, C′ is a vector of control variables, γ is a fixed effect at the regional level and ε captures the disturbance term.

Details of the samples’ socio-demographic variables are provided in Tables A1 and A2 in the Appendix. The mean age in the sample is 35 years and 57% of the respondents are female. Furthermore, 86.5% of the respondents identify themselves as Kosovo Albanians, whereas 13.5% identify as Serbs. The average respondent has completed upper secondary education.

Empirical analysis

This section analyses the impact of individual war experiences on various forms of political participation in postwar Kosovo. Figure 1 plots the average marginal effects (AME) of war experience on the respective form of participation (see also Table A3 in the Appendix). The point estimates are represented by the black dots; if the 95% confidence band crosses the vertical line, we have to assume a non-significant effect. We want to highlight several important characteristics of the results.

Figure 1.

Average marginal effects (AME) of war experience on different forms of political participation.

First and foremost, individuals that were directly affected by the war are significantly more likely to participate in non-institutionalized forms of participation such as protests and signing petitions. However, we find no relationship between war victimization and more institutionalized forms of participation such as joining a political party or voting. Here, the respective coefficients fail to be significant.

In substantive terms, the probability of participating in a protest increases with 25.4 percentage points and to sign a petition with 30.2 percentage points if the individual experienced war events. Among the controls, ethnicity is a strong predictor of participation in elections, most likely because the Serbs repeatedly boycotted local and national elections. While parental education is not related to political participation, highly educated persons are generally more inclined to participate in all forms of participation.⁵

To check whether our results are robust, we conducted several tests (see Table A4 in the Appendix). We apply municipal-level fixed effects instead of using just the five dummies for Kosovo’s main regions. Both in the protest-model and in the petition-model, the effect of war experiences remains significant. Furthermore, we restrict our analyses to a youth subsample. To obtain the youth sample, we excluded all individuals who were 30 years or older in 2010 (18 years or older in 1998) because politically active Kosovo Albanians could have been systematic targets of Serbian authorities. Trimming the data in this way reduces the sample to 433 observations. The relationship between war experiences remains significant at the 1% level for protest and at the 10% level for petitions.⁶

Admittedly, we cannot exclude the possibility of some omitted variable bias, in that victimized individuals were those who would show a high degree of participation levels anyway. Therefore, we conducted a sensitivity analysis following Altonji et al.’s (2005) procedure to test the robustness of the estimated effects of individual war experience to selection bias due to an omitted variable (see Bellows and Miguel, 2009: 1151; Rohner et al., 2013: 231–232) This approach measures the amount of selection on unobserved variables with the help of the amount of selection on the observed explanatory variables in order to assess how severe the omitted variable bias has to be for the effect of war experiences to be fully driven by unobserved factors. We find no indication that our results arise solely from unobservable variables.⁷

The moderating role of the postwar situation: civil war, economic grievances and non-institutionalized political behavior

We have shown that civil war experiences are positively related to postwar non-institutionalized forms of political behavior. Research on the psychological legacy of war indicates that war experiences continue to affect individuals long after the end of war (Bramsen and van der Ploeg, 1999; Brodaty et al., 2004; Hong and Kang, 2015; Maercker et al., 1999). It has to be noted, however, that beyond long-lasting psychological harm, personal situations in the aftermath of war may influence the turn to politics, too. Experiencing the transition to an independent and democratic state, war victims cast a critical eye over developments in politics and society. Thus, caution caused by war could make Kosovo’s citizens more skeptical of the way everyday life and politics work. Disillusionment and dissatisfaction with daily politics could promote elite-challenging attitudes. In this vein, grievance theory, for example, suggests that personal dissatisfaction and grievances stimulate political participation and particularly protest behavior. Grievances can be defined as “feelings of dissatisfaction with important aspects of life” such as living standard, income, employment, etc. (Klandermans et al., 2001: 42). Such grievances may drive political participation if they become translated into political demands (van Stekelenburg and Klandermans, 2013).

Kosovo was one of the poorest countries in Europe in the years after the war, with slow economic growth, high rates of unemployment (particularly among the youth) and high rates of inflation (Bislimi, 2012; Seppänen and Karttunen, 2008).⁸ Although the international actors associated with UNMIK (United Nations Interim Administration Mission Kosovo) were able to start a successful initial phase of growth and reconstruction in postwar Kosovo, it failed to create a functioning policy environment and promote conditions for lasting, stable economic development (Deimel, 2014: 130). Right after the war, the unemployment rate was as high as 57%; however, in 2007 it had sunk to 40% (Bartlett, 2009: 27). According to Bartlett (2009: 26ff), almost all areas outside of Pristina experienced severe poverty and deprivation and 30% of the Kosovar population lived below the poverty line of 1.42 euros per day during that period, with half of those living in extreme poverty. Although observers argued that the global financial crisis did not affect Kosovo directly, it has had an indirect effect on Kosovars, owing to rising unemployment rates in migrant host countries, causing subsequent reductions in remittances and thereby affecting the Kosovar economy on a whole, making everyday life for Kosovars more difficult (Lubrani, 2009). Already suffering from war experiences, the additional challenges resulting from the economic crisis may have a powerful impact on the economic situation of victimized individuals. Moreover, if politics matter for war victims because they feel they have sacrificed a lot for their own state, we would expect them to be both very critical of public policies and willing to do something about this problem. This should be all the more the case if victims feel that former insurgents actually profit from the conflict, because feelings of injustice have been found to promote collective action (Wood, 2006). This is in line with the high level of dissatisfaction with economic and political developments and a relatively strong appetite for protest generally found among Kosovars in the postwar era (Dyrstad, 2015; Günal, 2014; Hetemi et al., 2013: 7–10; Ringdal, 2015: 287).⁹ Still, the issues of slow economic development, democratization, widespread corruption, establishment of the rule of law and a weak civil society represent pressing issues in Kosovo (Bislimi, 2012; Deimel, 2014: 125; Günal, 2014: 26–27). Accordingly, we develop a third hypothesis:

H2a: The positive relation between war experiences and non-institutionalized political behavior is strengthened for individuals who also experience personal deprivation in the postwar era.

To test this assumption of the moderating role of the postwar situation, we measure grievances by capturing whether and how the individual and its household were affected by the economic crisis in 2008–2010. We use an additive scale of 10 items concerning a wide array of economic grievances (losing one’s job, closing the family business, reduction of working hours, delayed or reduced wages, reduced flow of remittances, return of family members from abroad, engaging in additional job, or an increase in working hours). This variable ranges from 0 to 6. Higher values indicate more grievances.

As argued above, it is plausible to presume that the impact of war experiences on people’s protest behavior is moderated by the individual’s level of economic deprivation. This can be tested by modeling an interaction between war experiences and economic hardship. The results are shown in Table A5 in the Appendix. Only the interaction term in the protest model is statistically significant, indicating that higher levels of economic grievances are related to a stronger effect of war experiences on protest behavior.¹⁰ We find no empirical evidence in the petition model in this regard. Figure 2 illustrates the conditional marginal effect of war experiences on protest behavior at different levels of economic hardship after the crisis in 2008–2010. The confidence intervals illustrate the conditions under which war experience influence political behavior significantly. The effect is significant when both the upper and lower bounds of the intervals are above or below the zero line. From the results, it is evident that the marginal effect of war experiences on protest increases in magnitude with increasing experience of economic hardship.

Figure 2.

Conditional marginal effects (average marginal effects) of war experiences on protest behavior at different levels of economic grievances with 95% confidence intervals.

The probability of protesting increases by 20 percentage points with a one-unit increase in war experiences at the lowest level of economic grievances, whereas an increase in war experiences raises the probability of protesting by 86 percentage points at the highest level of economic grievances. In the absence of economic grievances (economic grievances = 0), the probability of protesting is not higher, despite having been exposed to war. This indicates that a favorable postwar environment may cancel the effect of war victimization. Nevertheless, when present, economic grievances augment the impact of war experiences on the individual’s likelihood to protest.¹¹

Discussion

Why are individuals in Kosovo generally more likely to protest or sign petitions, rather than to vote and join political parties? One possible explanation may be the nature of the postwar political environment of Kosovo. The political system in the postwar years has been argued to lack a clear political authority that can make actual changes in Kosovar society (Günal, 2014; Institut de la Dèmocratie et de la Cooperation, 2009). Bad management and broken promises by past governments led to dissatisfaction and disappointment, resulting in a low voter turnout of 43% in the last parliamentary elections held before the declaration of independence on 10 November 2007 (Günal, 2014: 156). The presence of the international community and their reliance on certain groups of societal actors, rather than the actual civil society (Weichert, 2007: 365), resulted in a situation in which the civil society had difficulties influencing the political agenda through discussions, interest groups or policy-oriented initiatives and tended to turn to protest (Deimel, 2014: 132). Indeed, Kosovars in general do not think that they can influence political decision-making (Günal, 2014: 157). Moreover, the continuously high levels of corruption have been considered a serious problem in the postwar era, with a majority of the population believing corruption to take place in the government (Freedom House, 2008). This, combined with the, in reality, lack of power by the elected Kosovar officials owing to the power of the international actors (e.g. the UN Security Council), completely undermined the power of the political institutions and the use of voting in the postwar era (Bislimi, 2012: 63). Under such circumstances, people may turn to non-institutionalized forms of participation as a last resort to express their grievances and to promote political change. This is confirmed by Deimel (2014: 132), who observes that in such an environment, civic engagement and public participation tend to occur in public street protest instead of through more traditional channels of participation.

Conclusion

This study evaluates how exposure to war is related to political behavior in post-conflict Kosovo. Although there is a growing interest in the role of civil war for making democracy work, our knowledge on the connections between violent conflict and political behavior is still very limited. Our analyses indicate that persons who were affected by the conflict are more inclined to participate in non-institutionalized forms of political behavior, such as protests and sign petitions in the postwar period. In addition, the postwar environment in which the individuals find themselves influences the likelihood of protesting: if the individual is treated well by life, then the war experiences lose their influence on protest. Yet economic hardship intensifies the impact of war experiences on protest behavior. We find no indication regarding the relationship between crime victimization and institutionalized forms of political behavior, i.e. voting or party membership.

Although our results are a first step relating victimization to political participation, certain limitations should be kept in mind. First, the specificity of the postwar context raises concerns about the generalizability of these effects, since it is a theoretical possibility that participation in other countries might unfold in traditional patterns because new parties emerge or existing political organizations are adept at harnessing the increased desire to participate. Further cross-country comparative analysis is needed to examine under which conditions different types of participation follow from war exposure.

Second, we have built our hypotheses on various accounts of victimization studies and on the findings of psychological accounts on the individual-level effects of traumatic events. We did not test our specific mechanisms owing to the lack of data, but we have tried to lay some theoretical ground for future work. Separating these potential explanations needs further qualitative research, not least because of understanding the consequences of victims’ participation for democracy (Bateson, 2012: 584).

Moreover, all accounts of the Kosovo civil war have described the patterns of violence as arbitrary and exogenous to the conflict. Nevertheless, we cannot exclude the possibility of a certain selection bias of the respondents. While the sample does include individuals with and without war experiences, it is certainly possible that people who are the most affected by war or have had the strongest psychological reactions to war did not participate in the survey. Further, our analysis is based on cross-sectional data, only containing individual responses at one point in time. This implies that we cannot observe the change in political behavior following war experiences, since both war experience and political behavior are measured at the same time. Nevertheless, we conducted several analytical steps addressing the most troublesome confounders. Finally, although the factual nature and saliency of personal experiences should improve the accuracy of survey responses, we cannot completely exclude the possibility that respondents have repressed their experiences (Bradburn et al., 1987; Schulhofer-Wohl, 2014).

As our analysis has shown, war experiences drive certain types of political participation rather than others, possibly depending on the postwar political context. Rather than encouraging institutionalized forms of participation and an inclusion of the general public in the political system, war experience is related to higher levels of a conflictive type of participation, namely protest. This highlights a need for future postwar state-building efforts to focus on the inclusion of citizens in the process of democratization and institution-building. Only in this manner can a mutual dialogue between the government and its citizens be developed, fostering the emergence of a positive civic political culture and a healthy democracy.

Further, our analyses demonstrate that the impact of war experiences is particularly conditional on the postwar economic situation that the individuals are in. For individuals who do well economically, their war experiences show no influence on their inclination to protest. In other words, if postwar societies are able to bounce back and foster a prospering economy, one positive externality of this growth may be political stability, because particularly the individuals that were affected by the war are reintegrated into society and will not follow any non-institutionalized paths of protest. In this regard, economic growth should foster political stability in postwar countries.

Footnotes

Appendix

Table A5.

Detailed results of the non-institutionalized participation models with interaction with economic grievances

Independent variables	Unstandardized Logit-Coefficients (log-odds)
	Protest model	Petition model
War Experiences	0.602	1.445**
	(0.723)	(0.628)
Economic Grievances	0.076	0.029
	(0.064)	(0.060)
War Experiences*Economic Grievances	0.871 **	0.249
	(0.341)	(0.317)
Age	0.014*	−0.011
	(0.007)	(0.007)
Male (Ref.: Female)	0.387**	0.396**
	(0.180)	(0.160)
Parental Education	−0.015	0.013
	(0.024)	(0.022)
Albanian (Ref.: Serb)	0.347	0.282
	(0.312)	(0.298)
Region of Origin (Ref.: North)
Northwest	−0.516	0.719**
	(0.341)	(0.297)
Pristina	−0.029	0.741***
	(0.281)	(0.263)
Southeast	0.503	−0.642*
	(0.319)	(0.372)
Southwest	−0.215	0.777**
	(0.346)	(0.308)
Education (Ref.: None)
Lower Secondary or less	−0.256	0.884***
	(0.334)	(0.321)
Upper Secondary	0.384	1.101***
	(0.310)	(0.312)
Post-Secondary	1.000***	1.500***
	(0.325)	(0.329)
Tertiary	1.592***	1.486***
	(0.400)	(0.419)
N	972	972
Pseudo R²	0.082	0.097

***

p < 0.01; **p < 0.05; *p < 0.1.

Author’s note

All supplementary materials including replication data, do-files as well as Online Appendices are available at .

Funding

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

Notes

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