In this introduction to the special issue, we define and explore the concept of national narratives in East and Southeast Asia. First, we define national narratives as collectively shared stories about a nation’s origins, boundaries and purposes. Second, we discuss three undertheorized elements of the narrative: the identity of the storyteller, the content of the stories, and contestation over the dominant narrative. Finally, we assess some methodological and measurement challenges in the literature before introducing the papers in this special issue. Drawing on cases from China, Vietnam, Indonesia, South Korea, Taiwan, Myanmar and the Philippines, we address questions related to the construction of personality cults and colonial memory. We also discuss how democratization impacts the identity of the storytellers, and how this impacts views on national boundaries and political violence.
How does women’s leadership affect the behavior of criminal organizations? Organized criminal groups are male-dominated patriarchal organizations that use violence to govern, compete, and control territory. Qualitative research suggests that women leaders—though rare—reduce their organization’s violent behavior. We examine this expectation through Mexico’s Tijuana Cartel, leveraging the sudden 2008 ascension of a woman to leadership. Although violence increased under her tenure, synthetic control results show greater reliance on hidden violence and less on visible violence and territorial expansion. Original data on male cartel leaders reveals that systematic gender differences in trajectories help explain these patterns. Our results indicate that women leaders are not necessarily less violent than men but instead strategically employ different violent repertoires. Case studies of 44 women leaders across 18 countries since 1850 assess the broader applicability of these findings and identify important scope conditions. Our findings underscore the importance of incorporating gender into organized crime research.
Researchers have extensively examined how political violence shapes social and political behavior, yet most studies focus on interethnic violence and assume a binary conflict structure. This study challenges that assumption by examining how perpetrator identity, ingroup versus outgroup, shapes postwar intergroup relations. Using original survey data from Tamil civilians in Northern Sri Lanka, we analyze exposure to intragroup and intergroup violence during Sri Lanka’s 26-year civil war, which involved substantial violence both across and within ethnic groups. We find that exposure to intragroup violence is associated with lower trust toward coethnics, reduced ingroup favoritism in attitudes and behavior, and weaker reliance on ethnic cues in political choice. In contrast, exposure to intergroup violence increases interethnic prejudice and social distance, heightens discrimination in behavioral interactions, and strengthens ethnically motivated political behavior. These findings indicate that perpetrator identity shapes the social legacies of wartime violence and can generate opposing postwar dynamics.
Under what conditions does violence generate legacies of political [dis]engagement? Victimization is frequently linked to higher rates of political engagement – voting, protesting, attending meetings, etc. Often, however, victims withdraw from politics. These initial responses are evident generations later. I reconcile these disparate trends by analyzing the materialization of national conflict at the local level. When a community experiences violence perpetrated by non-local factions, victimization is more likely to politicize. By contrast, when perpetrated by members of one’s community against other local members, violence is more likely to depoliticize. To test these arguments, I leverage an original survey, archival material, and interviews from the understudied case of Cameroon. From 1956 to 1971, the Union des Populations du Cameroun (UPC) fought against French and Cameroonian state and paramilitary forces. Civilians were heavily targeted by the state, militias, and UPC guerillas. Today, variation in those local experiences is associated with differences in political behavior and socialization practices.
How and why do concessions, or promises to implement reform in the future, affect protest mobilization in autocracies? Concessions are a routine response to protest and generate a puzzling empirical regularity: Although autocrats often renege once protest abates, concessions can produce demobilization. We develop a model showing that concessions demobilize by exploiting heterogeneity among protesters. A subgroup of moderates, who derive symbolic value from the autocrat’s promise to reform, and a subgroup of radicals, who value only implemented reforms, must coordinate to sustain protest after a concession. Concessions undermine the between-group coordination necessary for protests large enough to prevent reneging. Some moderates demobilize in response to promised concessions, and in turn, declining turnout demobilizes radicals. Even autocrats in highly repressive regimes may concede because concessions and repression demobilize through distinct mechanisms. However, concessions lose efficacy as moderates lose trust in the autocrat. Morocco’s Feb20 movement illustrates the theory.
