Displacement, Civil War Participation, and the Development of Partisan Identity

• In Event: Urban Politics in the Middle East and North Africa

Abstract

Existing research shows that former rebel organizations often become electorally dominant parties in the aftermath of civil war. Organizational, material, and reputational mechanisms underlie the association between wartime militias and their post-war success at the ballot box. Linkages between these mechanisms and the locally-variant wartime experiences of civilians, however, remain understudied. In this paper, we use an original national survey and qualitative interview evidence from Lebanon to investigate how experiences of internal wartime displacement during and participation in the country’s civil war (1975-90) influence contemporary partisan dentification and voting behavior. We focus on individuals’ experience of residential displacement within and across urban geographies due to violence experienced during the civil war. We argue and show that displacement into unfamiliar urban areas due to wartime violence results in the supplanting of kin-based social support networks by partisan ones, and that this has long-term consequences for partisan affiliation and voting patterns in Lebanese cities. We also investigate how different forms of wartime militia participation and support on the part of the displaced facilitate this transformation of social ties. 

Authors

• Christiana Parreira, Geneva Graduate Institute

• Amanda Rizkallah, Pepperdine University