To Blame or to Support? Large-scale Insurgent Attacks on Civilians and Public Trust in State Institutions

Annekatrin Deglow,Ralph Sundberg

doi:10.1093/isq/sqab021

Abstract

Abstract While there is a substantial body of literature on the consequences of terror attacks on public attitudes toward state institutions in Western democracies, little is known about the impact that such events have in the context of armed conflict. We address this gap by exploring the attitudinal effects of a 2012 Taliban attack on civilians in Kabul City, Afghanistan. We test two competing hypotheses: the “rally-effect” hypothesis according to which individuals increase their trust in incumbent institutions in the aftermath of violent attacks and the “accountability” hypothesis according to which individuals punish state institutions for their inability to provide security by withdrawing trust. Leveraging a quasi-experiment that compares individuals interviewed before the attack to individuals interviewed thereafter, we find that the attack—in line with the rally-effect hypothesis—increased trust in several state institutions among residents of Kabul City.

Highlights

Stanton 2013; Thomas 2014; Fortna 2015; Polo and Gled-Between 1989 and 2018, insurgent groups around the globe deliberately killed over 200,000 civilians.1 Perhaps one of the most sinister ways in which civilians die in the context of armed conflict is through attacks that aim to produce large numbers of civilian casualties
We provided evidence that strengthened our confidence in a causal relationship between the attack and institutional trust, as well as this relationship being driven by a rally effect
If we presume that the observed relationship is due to a rally effect, what might explain this discrepancy in the empirical results? A possible explanation lies in the type of threat perceptions that attacks such as the one we study trigger

Summary

Introduction

Stanton 2013; Thomas 2014; Fortna 2015; Polo and Gled-Between 1989 and 2018, insurgent groups around the globe deliberately killed over 200,000 civilians. Perhaps one of the most sinister ways in which civilians die in the context of armed conflict is through attacks that aim to produce large numbers of civilian casualties. That violence against civilians constitutes a prominent feature of the violent repertoires of insurgent groups to pressure governments into concessions and to undermine public support for the state is well known (e.g., Crenshaw 1981; Hultman 2009; itsch 2016; Butcher 2017; Polo and González 2020). We know little about the capacity of large-scale attacks to shape public attitudes toward the state and its institutions in the context of ongoing armed conflict. Understanding how such attacks shape citizens’ perceptions of formal state institutions is important, as the democratic and effective functioning of these require some levels of institutional trust to be present (cf Deglow 2018, 12). How much trust the public places in its institutions affects levels of compliance with the rules and regulations

Results

Discussion

Conclusion