Measuring the persistence, memory, and salience of state repression. Evidence from Cambodia

• Applicant: Mathias Bühler, Ph.D.
• Subject Area: Economic and Social History
• Term: from 2019 to 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 433359864

Over the last century, state repression has cost the lives of millions, and several more have suffered from various forms of political persecution. Although the immediate effect of state-sponsored violence is to quell the popularity of dissent, it is unclear how the experience of state repression shapes political participation in society once the violence ends. In this proposal, we examine whether changes in social structure and preferences that are visible in post-conflict democratic societies are driven by the direct experience of repression and related long-term memory (persistence of memory) or by constant reminders through political instrumentalization of these memories (salience). The distinction between the persistence of memories and their salience is important, since the former may change behavior permanently, while the latter could be used by politicians to stimulate fear. In doing so, we increase our understanding of why repression is so common and what the long-term effects on social structure and preferences are. We combine the work on the long-term impacts of conflict and two-sided violence (e.g. Bellows and Miguel, 2009; Blattman, 2009) and the recent literature on increasing the salience of fearful events in post-war societies (Callen et al 2014). The distinction between persistent and salient memories is especially crucial to our understanding of the long-term impacts of state-led violence when politicians refer back to times of violence to justify their actions and to instill fear among the people. Reminding voters of the past has become a widely used tool of many politicians. Failing to deliver on their promises, politicians seeking reelection increase the salience of memories of violence to portray themselves as the guarantor of stability to gain votes. At the same time, this is often a thinly veiled threat to voters of the opposition. The calculus is simple: If fearful voters refrain from voicing their opinion, the threatening politician wins the election and is able to extract rents from resources and to redirect development spending. In this project, we plan to use variation in genocide intensity across Cambodia to administer a survey that randomizes the order in which individuals face questions on the genocide. While the former estimates the impact of persistent memories of state repression, the latter estimates the impact of salient memories if we mention the genocide early in the questionnaire. This unique cross-randomization design allows us to jointly estimate and compare the impact of salient and persistent memories to judge the impact of different types of memories on preferences and development outcomes today. Crucially, this allows us to judge whether the threat of violence or repression, and hence the reoccurring salient memories, has a considerable impact on the livelihood of people and is an effective tool for autocrats to maintain power.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: Sweden
• Co-Investigator: Dr. Dorothee Bühler
• Cooperation Partner: Andreas Madestam, Ph.D.