Simon Hug1 2 3, Cécile Richetta4, Sarah Zahreddine 2  5

First version: April 2025, this rough draft: Apr 21, 2025
Paper prepared for presentation at the  
The 7th International Conference on European Economics and Politics  
(University of Milano-Bicocca, June 12-13, 2025)

Exposure to violence and trust

Exposure to violence and trust6

Abstract

While the literature on civil conflicts acknowledges that the social and institutional consequences of violent events are not well understood, recent contributions in this area, even though increasing in numbers, have not allowed for a clear answer whether "war can foster cooperation." We argue that this comes about by the fact that studies often consider different types of violence, measure outcomes very differently and face considerable problems in ensuring that the effects determined are actually causal. Leveraging the random assignment of Spanish conscripts to military regions until 1992, we overcome some of these challenges and can assess how violent events perpetrated by the Basque Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA) in respondents' military region during their time of service affects both generalized trust and ingroup, respectively outgroup trust . We find that the effect on the intended to treated is positive for genealized trust, but negative for outgroup trust.

Footnotes:

1Département de science politique, Faculté des sciences de la société; Université de Genève; 40 Bd du Pont d'Arve; 1211 Genève 4; Switzerland; email: simon.hug@unige.ch
2CISA, Université de Genève
3 CefES research fellow, Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca
4Département de science politique, Faculté des sciences de la société; Université de Genève; 40 Bd du Pont d'Arve; 1211 Genève 4; Switzerland; email: Cecile.Richetta@unige.ch
5Département de science politique, Faculté des sciences de la société; Université de Genève; 40 Bd du Pont d'Arve; 1211 Genève 4; Switzerland; email: Sarah.Zahreddine@unige.ch
6Funding by the Swiss National Science Foundation (Grant No. TMAG-1_216066/1) is gratefully acknowledged.

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