Blaming Rebels Lowers Support for Peace in Postconflict Colombia

Why This Question Matters

How citizens assign blame for renewed violence after a peace deal can shape whether societies consolidate peace or regress to conflict. Frank Wyer asks whether political messaging that attributes postconflict violence to one side or the other changes public support for peace agreements—a central concern for policymakers, negotiators, and scholars of peacebuilding.

Colombia After the 2016 Agreement

The study focuses on Colombia, which experienced episodes of violence following its 2016 peace accord. In Colombian public discourse, rival camps frame such violence either as the result of rebel noncompliance or as a failure of government implementation. Those competing narratives provide a real-world setting to test how blame-focused messaging affects attitudes toward peace deals.

Field Experiment With 1,466 Respondents

Wyer implemented a large survey experiment with 1,466 participants drawn from both conflict and non-conflict zones in Colombia. Respondents read news-style vignettes about episodes of postconflict violence that were experimentally paired with short messages emphasizing either rebel culpability or government implementation failures (or neutral information). The primary outcome was respondents' expressed support for the peace agreement.

Key Findings

• Messages that emphasized rebel culpability significantly reduced support for the peace agreement.
• Messages that emphasized poor government implementation did not produce a strong, opposite effect on support for the agreement.

Mechanism: Who Do People Blame?

A diagnostic probe of causal pathways shows why these messages had asymmetric effects. Emphasizing rebel culpability led respondents to attribute blame primarily to the rebels. By contrast, stressing government implementation failures tended to push respondents toward a shared-blame conclusion—seeing both the government and rebels as responsible. This diffusion of blame limited the persuasive power of messages that blamed the government alone.

Implications for Peacebuilders and Political Actors

The findings suggest that blame-framing matters: messages that single out armed actors can erode public backing for negotiated settlements, while critiques of implementation may be less polarizing because they encourage joint attribution of fault. For scholars, the study highlights how short informational frames interact with existing conflict legacies to reshape public attitudes toward peace processes.