ABSTRACT

(Re)gaining citizens’ trust is a challenge for post-war governments. Political trust is crucial for understanding both the risk of civil war in the first place and the state-society relationships that emerge afterwards. Peace agreements are tools to stop the fighting, address war’s injustices, and provide a blueprint for the state’s future – and they do so to varying degrees. Yet we have little systematic knowledge of how people react to such agreements and with what consequences. We argue that in post-war societies, people’s perceptions of the strategies aimed at ending the violence and (re)building the state have an enduring impact on people’s view of the state. In this study, we examine the association between post-conflict political trust and people’s approval of peace agreements analyzing a set of nationally representative, comparative surveys from Guatemala, Nepal, and Northern Ireland, three cases where long civil wars were ended by peace agreements. We find that individuals’ approval of the agreement and the perception that it has been implemented are positively associated with political trust, and that accounting for views of the peace agreement substantially improve on conventional explanations for political trust.

摘要

（重新）获得公民的信任是战后政府面临的挑战。政治信任对于首先理解内战风险和随后出现的国家-社会关系至关重要。和平协议是停止战斗、解决战争不公正和为国家未来提供蓝图的工具——而且它们在不同程度上这样做。然而，我们对人们如何对此类协议做出反应以及会产生什么后果知之甚少。我们认为，在战后社会中，人们对旨在结束暴力和（重建）国家的战略的看法对人们对国家的看法具有持久的影响。在这项研究中，我们通过分析一组具有全国代表性的、来自危地马拉、尼泊尔和北爱尔兰的比较调查，三个长期内战因和平协议而结束的案例。我们发现个人对协议的认可和对协议已实施的看法与政治信任呈正相关，并且对和平协议的看法的解释大大改善了对政治信任的传统解释。