The Long Shadow of the Spanish Civil War” joint with Ana Tur-Prats (UC Merced)
Abstract:
The Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) was one o f the most devastating conflicts of the twentieth century, yet little is kn own about its long-term legacy. In this paper we show that the war had a si gnificant long-lasting effect on social capital and voting behavior. We use geo-located data on historical mass graves, disaggregated modern-day surve y data on trust combined with electoral results. To deal with the potential endogeneity of conflict, we use military plans of attack in conjunction wi th the historical (1931) highway network, as well as a geographical Regress ion Discontinuity Design around the Aragon Front. Our results show a signif icantly negative relationship between exhumed mass graves and generalized t rust, pointing towards the deleterious long-term effects of political viole nce against civilians. This result does not extend to general combat deaths . We further decompose trust, finding negative effects of conflict on trust in institutions associated with the Civil War (i.e. the Civil Guard and th e military), but no effects when looking at trust on Post 1975 democratic i nstitutions. We also find long-lasting results on voting, corresponding to the political repression implemented in the Aragon Front. In terms of mecha nisms, using a specialized survey on the Civil War and street-level data, w e find lower levels of political engagement and differential patterns of co llective memory.
DTSTAMP:20260404T112344Z DTSTART:20200514T180000Z DTEND:20200514T190000Z SEQUENCE:0 TRANSP:OPAQUE END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR