Barceló Joan
Division of Social Science, New York University Abu Dhabi, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2021 Feb 9;118(6). doi: 10.1073/pnas.2015539118.
What are the legacies of war exposure on civic engagement? Recent evidence suggests that domestic war may have short-term effects on participation in social organizations. Yet, it is unclear whether these effects will be present in internationalized conflicts and persist over long periods of time. Further, the pathways of persistence by which war exposure leads to greater civic engagement in the long term are even less understood. In this paper, I contribute to both questions using unique evidence from the Vietnam War. Empirically, I combine a unique US military dataset containing bombing intensity with respondents' wartime place of residence to generate an objective indicator of conflict intensity. Then, I exploit the distance to the arbitrarily drawn border at the 17th parallel as an instrument for conflict intensity. The results show that individuals who lived in a province heavily affected by the conflict during the war tend to be more engaged in social organizations and hold greater expressive values, at least 26 y later. Further, I empirically explore the mechanisms of persistence. The empirical evidence suggests that both persistence within individuals and community-wide transmission jointly account for the long-term increase of civic engagement after conflict.
战争经历对公民参与有哪些遗留影响？近期证据表明，内战可能对参与社会组织有短期影响。然而，尚不清楚这些影响在国际化冲突中是否会出现，以及是否会长期持续。此外，战争经历长期导致更大公民参与度的持续途径更是鲜为人知。在本文中，我利用越南战争的独特证据来探讨这两个问题。从实证角度看，我将一个包含轰炸强度的独特美国军事数据集与受访者战时居住地相结合，以生成冲突强度的客观指标。然后，我利用到北纬17度任意划定边界的距离作为冲突强度的工具变量。结果表明，战争期间生活在受冲突严重影响省份的个人，至少在26年后往往更积极参与社会组织并持有更强的表达价值观。此外，我从实证角度探索了持续的机制。实证证据表明，个体内部的持续性和社区范围内的传播共同导致冲突后公民参与度的长期增加。
