When Do Citizens Support Peace-Building? Economic Hardship and Civilian Support for Rebel Reintegration
2025-12-01
Key to the success of international peace-building efforts is the cooperation and support of civilian populations. Studies show that economic considerations shape combatants’ willingness to lay down their arms. We study a related but under-studied question: does economic hardship impact civilian support for conflict cessation? If reintegration of former combatants into productive economic sectors threatens civilians’ own incomes, then support for peace-building may diminish. We investigate localized effects of the 2015 Hindu Kush earthquake using individual-level survey data on support for Taliban reintegration. The earthquake reduced support for reintegration into disproportionately impacted economic sectors. We observe no effect for less impacted sectors. Results are robust to a battery of tests, including a novel spatial randomization leveraging geocoded fault lines corresponding to the universe of counterfactual earthquakes. Our findings provide new insight into the resolution of violent conflict: economic hardship may undermine civilian support for rebel reintegration.