Peace without Impunity: Worldview in the Settlement of Civil Wars

Peace processes can bring to the fore a host of normative and practical questions that produce heated public disagreement. These disagreements can generate political obstacles to the successful negotiation and implementation of settlements. Here, I argue that public dissatisfaction with peace processes is in part rooted in core, fundamental differences in worldview, which have been found to inform how citizens form preferences over a wide array of security-related policy issues. Drawing on an original survey fielded at the height of the Colombian peace process, I show that the core values that guide people's everyday lives have implications for how they think about and behave during peace processes. Results from a conjoint experiment indicate that individuals with more fixed, or authoritarian, worldviews hold strong preferences for more punitive agreements than individuals who score low on these qualities. These same individuals were also more likely than their counterparts to abstain from the 2016 peace referendum, although surprisingly not more likely to vote against than in favor. The study sheds light on the microfoundations of public barriers to conflict termination and suggests that core, fundamental differences underlie public discord on the merits of conflict negotiations.

Automated summary

The study shows that public dissatisfaction with peace processes is partly rooted in core differences in worldview, impacting how people think and behave during peace processes. Individuals with more fixed or authoritarian worldviews tend to prefer more punitive agreements.