Violence and Reconciliation in Colombia: The Personal and the Contextual

Abstract

In the aftermath of war and large-scale violence, how can nations function as societies? How can people learn to live together again? Or, have the foundations of trust, civility, and predictability upon which fully functioning societies depend been irrevocably damaged? If we want to understand why reconciliation does or does not take root, we must begin by understanding the perspectives and interests of individuals. In this article, I develop such a model of individual attitudes towards reconciliation. In particular, I analyse the determinants of individual beliefs about reconciliation, with a particular emphasis on the impact of violence in Colombia. I combine survey data from the Latin American Public Opinion Project survey on individual attitudes regarding reconciliation with data on political violence to measure the extent to which individuals live in environments characterised by violence and how this shapes their opinions about reconciliation.