Truly reconciled? A dyadic analysis of post-conflict social reintegration in Northern Uganda
| Author | Arjan Verschoor,Ben D’Exelle,Matthew Osborne |
| Published date | 01 January 2018 |
| Date | 01 January 2018 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/0022343317729011 |
| Subject Matter | Regular Articles |
Truly reconciled? A dyadic analysis
of post-conflict social reintegration
in Northern Uganda
Matthew Osborne
School of International Development, University of East Anglia (UEA) & Stockholm Environment
Institute (SEI)
Ben D’Exelle
School of International Development, University of East Anglia (UEA)
Arjan Verschoor
School of International Development, University of East Anglia (UEA)
Abstract
In the aftermath of civil war or violent internal conflict, one of the key peacebuilding challenges is the reconciliation
of former enemies who are members of the same small-scale societies. A failure of social reintegration may contribute
to what is known as a conflict trap. To detect lingering hostile attitudes among a community’s various factions is
crucial, but the approaches adopted in previous studies tend to focus on the impact of conflict on one or other
aggregated indicator of social cohesion rather than on how violence-affected individuals regard and act towards their
fellow community members. Here we demonstrate the value of concentrating on this latter dyadic component of
social interactions and we use behavioural experiments and a social tie survey to assess, in an appropriately
disaggregated manner, social cohesion in a post-conflict setting in northern Uganda. Whereas in self-reported surveys,
ex-combatants appear to be well-connected, active members of their communities, the experiments unveil the contin-
ued reluctance of other community members to share or cooperate with them; fewer resources are committed to
ex-combatants than to others, which is statistically significant. The dyadic nature of our analysis allows us to detect
which groups are more prone to discriminate against ex-combatants, which may help facilitate targeted interventions.
Keywords
behavioural experiments, ex-combatants, northern Uganda, post-conflict social reintegration, social tie survey
Introduction
Post-conflict social reintegration may hold the key to
lasting peace. We know that internal civil conflicts have
large, negative effects on prosperity (e.g. Rodrik, 1999;
Murdoch & Sandler, 2002, 2004; Chen, Loayza &
Reynal-Querol, 2008; Cerra & Saxena, 2008). A failure
of social reintegration may reinforce and entrench the
effects of the resulting poverty, giving rise to a cyclical
conflict trap, in which material hardship along with
enduring hostile sentiments breeds future violence that
perpetuates underdevelopment, and so on (Collier &
Hoeffler, 2004; Collier et al., 2006; DeRouen &
Bercovitch, 2008).
A key mechanism in the conflict trap stems from
fractured societies. Conflicts have made enemies of peo-
ple who should for the good of their communities live,
work and trade peacefully together, but who may not be
willing or psychologically able to do so, once arms have
been laid down. Increasingly, post-conflict social
Corresponding author:
matthew.osborne@sei-international.org
Journal of Peace Research
2018, Vol. 55(1) 107–121
ªThe Author(s) 2017
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DOI: 10.1177/0022343317729011
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