Truly reconciled? A dyadic analysis of post-conflict social reintegration in Northern Uganda

Osborne, Matthew, D'Exelle, Ben ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9332-5223 and Verschoor, Arjan (2018) Truly reconciled? A dyadic analysis of post-conflict social reintegration in Northern Uganda. Journal of Peace Research, 55 (1). pp. 107-121. ISSN 0022-3433

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Abstract

In the aftermath of civil war or violent internal conflict, one of the key peacebuilding challenges is the reconciliation of former enemies who are members of the same small-scale societies. A failure of social reintegration may contribute to what is known as a conflict trap. To detect lingering hostile attitudes among a community’s various factions is crucial, but the approaches adopted in previous studies tend to focus on the impact of conflict on one or other aggregated indicator of social cohesion rather than on how violence-affected individuals regard and act towards their fellow community members. Here we demonstrate the value of concentrating on this latter dyadic component of social interactions and we use behavioural experiments and a social tie survey to assess, in an appropriately disaggregated manner, social cohesion in a post-conflict setting in northern Uganda. Whereas in self-reported surveys, ex-combatants appear to be well-connected, active members of their communities, the experiments unveil the continued reluctance of other community members to share or cooperate with them; fewer resources are committed to ex-combatants than to others, which is statistically significant. The dyadic nature of our analysis allows us to detect which groups are more prone to discriminate against ex-combatants, which may help facilitate targeted interventions.

Item Type: Article
Uncontrolled Keywords: behavioural experiments,ex-combatants,northern uganda,post-conflict social reintegration,social tie survey,sdg 16 - peace, justice and strong institutions ,/dk/atira/pure/sustainabledevelopmentgoals/peace_justice_and_strong_institutions
Faculty \ School: Faculty of Social Sciences > School of International Development
UEA Research Groups: Faculty of Social Sciences > Research Groups > Gender and Development
Faculty of Social Sciences > Research Groups > Impact Evaluation
Faculty of Social Sciences > Research Centres > Centre for Behavioural and Experimental Social Sciences
Faculty of Social Sciences > Research Groups > Behavioural Economics
Faculty of Social Sciences > Research Groups > Environment, Resources and Conflict
University of East Anglia Schools > Faculty of Science > Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research
Faculty of Science > Research Centres > Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research
Faculty of Social Sciences > Research Groups > Behavioural and Experimental Development Economics
Depositing User: Pure Connector
Date Deposited: 18 May 2017 05:06
Last Modified: 14 Jun 2023 12:58
URI: https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/63552
DOI: 10.1177/0022343317729011

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