The Political Legacies of Rebel Rule: Evidence from a Natural Experiment in Côte d’Ivoire

Abstract

How does exposure to rebel rule affect citizens’ political attitudes after armed conflicts end? We combine original survey data from Côte d’Ivoire with a natural experiment based on the arbitrary location of a ceasefire boundary to estimate the effects of exposure to rebel rule by the Forces Nouvelles (FN) on Ivorians’ sense of democratic citizenship. Our findings show that individuals in communities ruled by the FN held more negative attitudes about local government institutions 7 years after the reunification of the country, held weaker commitments to civic obligations, and were more likely to condone extralegal actions. The effects of rebel rule are larger than the effects of extreme lived poverty and appear among both rebel coethnics and non-coethnics. Using qualitative and survey evidence, we propose three theoretical mechanisms to explain why exposure to rebel rule weakened citizen-state relations: disrupted norms of compliance with state-like authorities, the formation of local self-help institutions leading to negative assessments of the redeployed state, and resentment due to unmet expectations of economic recovery. Our study informs debates about the links between war, citizenship, and statebuilding.