Rebel Rule Leaves Lasting Damage to Citizen-State Ties in Côte d’Ivoire

🔎 How Exposure Was Identified

A natural experiment exploits the arbitrary location of a ceasefire boundary to compare communities that experienced rule by the Forces Nouvelles (FN) with nearby communities that did not. Original survey data from Côte d'Ivoire measure citizens' attitudes roughly seven years after national reunification to estimate the political legacy of rebel governance.

📊 What the Evidence Looks Like

• Survey evidence compares communities on perceptions of local government, civic obligations, and tolerance for extralegal actions.
• The identification strategy relies on the ceasefire boundary's arbitrary placement to isolate the effect of FN rule from other confounders.

🧾 Key Findings

• Individuals who lived under FN rule held substantially more negative views of local government institutions seven years after reunification.
• These individuals reported weaker commitments to civic obligations and were more likely to condone extralegal actions.
• The estimated effects of exposure to rebel rule exceed the impact of extreme lived poverty on these political attitudes.
• Effects are observed among both rebel coethnics and non-coethnics, indicating broad social consequences.

🧭 Proposed Explanations

Qualitative and survey evidence point to three mechanisms linking rebel rule to weakened citizen–state relations:

• Disrupted norms of compliance with state-like authorities, reducing habitual deference to government actors.
• The emergence of local self-help institutions during rebel rule, which produced negative assessments of the redeployed state.
• Resentment from unmet expectations of postwar economic recovery, lowering trust and civic commitment.

💡 Why This Matters

These findings show that exposure to rebel governance can leave durable political legacies that undermine trust, civic duty, and tolerance for the state—insights relevant for postconflict statebuilding, citizenship formation, and policies aimed at political reintegration after civil war.