Civil war, social capital and resilience in Uganda

Abstract

We show that armed conflict in Uganda affects social capital as measured by trust and associational membership. Relying on three rounds of nationally representative individual-level data bracketing a large number of violent events, we find that selfreported generalized trust and associational membership decreased during the conflict in districts in which violent events took place. But we also find evidence for a rapid recovery of social capital in the aftermath of violence. Results from a variety of identification strategies, including difference-in-differences and instrumental variable estimates, suggests that these relationships are causal.