Attacks on peacekeepers and political trust during armed conflict: Quasi-experimental evidence from Mali

Although the majority of violence in civil wars occurs within geographically confined conflict zones, its impact on public opinion – including political trust – is likely to extend far beyond these areas. This paper uses quasi-random variation in exposure to political violence, introduced by an attack on UN peacekeepers that happened during survey data collection in Mali, to investigate how armed attacks affect political trust outside active conflict zones. The analysis shows that the attack decreased people’s economic expectations. In contrast to predictions from performance evaluation (and anger-oriented) explanations, this did not translate into lower political trust, nor to negative evaluations of democracy. Rather, trust in the armed forces, courts, political parties, and local politicians increased. For respondents who identified as ‘mostly Malian’, trust in government and police increased as well. The findings align with research on political psychology and ‘rally around the flag’ effects, which suggests that in times of severe crisis, anxiety-driven mechanisms push (other emotions and) cognitive evaluations to the background. By showing that in conflicts with existential and transnational dimensions, attacks by domestic actors can boost political trust, the paper contributes to a growing literature that shows that the drive to rally around political institutions when under attack extends beyond external attacks in consolidated democracies, to fragile, violent contexts and hybrid regimes.