Abstract
Post-war state-building is fraught with challenges as “war-makers” pivot to become “state-makers.” Citizen assessments of public good provision and physical security provide a measure of how state-building is perceived internally. State-building may also necessitate external dependence (Russia, for example, provides significant financial and military assistance to the post-Soviet de facto states), yet new state authorities want to be seen as more than puppets. We study the relationship between internal and external state-building dynamics in fostering citizen confidence in the post-war state. We use original population surveys to analyze public opinion and geographically disaggregated data on local violence from four post-Soviet de facto states—Abkhazia, Nagorno-Karabakh, South Ossetia, and Transdniestria—born of war. We examine the scalar relationships—from the individual embedded in the local context, to the regional (de facto territory) and supra-national (patron state and legitimacy in the international community)—that characterize them. We find that distrust of the patron state reduces trust in the de facto state president and translates into a lack of confidence in the prevailing order. As fears of conflict recurrence increase and disappointments about the economy worsen, these relationships are maintained across the pathways defined by the scale of patron trust-distrust.
Highlights
Introduction and argumentFor armed groups in intrastate conflicts, winning the war against the state is just the beginning.1 A foundational challenge is for former “war-makers” to demonstrate to their own citizens that they can make good on their commitment to be “state-makers.” They have to convince their citizens that they are credible rulers, “ able to kill and to destroy but to build and invest as well” (Schlichte, 2009, p. 96)
We indicate a note of caution on causation: We argue that there is a causal relationship between people's views on state-building, conditional on their trust in the patron state's leadership, and confidence in the ruler and prevailing order
Our findings demonstrate that citizens' worries about state-building and governing activities of the new territorial entity reduce a ruler's credibility, but this is the case when citizens do not have much trust in the external patron backing the ruler
Summary
For armed groups in intrastate conflicts, winning the war against the state is just the beginning. A foundational challenge is for former “war-makers” to demonstrate to their own citizens that they can make good on their (implicit or explicit) commitment to be “state-makers.” They have to convince their citizens that they are credible rulers, “ able to kill and to destroy but to build and invest as well” (Schlichte, 2009, p. 96). A foundational challenge is for former “war-makers” to demonstrate to their own citizens that they can make good on their (implicit or explicit) commitment to be “state-makers.”. They have to convince their citizens that they are credible rulers, “ able to kill and to destroy but to build and invest as well” To understand the dynamic relationship between the internal and external influences on people's confidence in the post-war order, we utilize local-level data on violence and original survey data collected in 2010e2011 in the four post-Soviet de facto states cited above.
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