Intergroup Violence and Political Attitudes: Evidence … · Intergroup Violence and Political Attitudes: Evidence from a Dividing Sudan Bernd Beber New York University Philip Roessler

Intergroup Violence and Political Attitudes:Evidence from a Dividing Sudan

Bernd Beber New York University

Philip Roessler College of William & Mary

Alexandra Scacco New York University

How do episodes of intergroup violence affect political opinions toward outgroup members? Recent studies offerdivergent answers. Some suggest violence deepens antagonism and reduces support for compromise, while otherscontend it encourages moderation and concessions to prevent further conflict. We argue that violence can fuel bothhostility toward the outgroup and acceptance of outgroup objectives and provide evidence from a unique survey of1,380 respondents implemented by the authors in greater Khartoum in Sudan in 2010 and 2011. We find thatNortherners who experienced rioting by Southerners in Khartoum in 2005 were more likely to support Southernindependence but less likely to support citizenship for Southerners remaining in the North. In combination, theseresults suggest that political violence hardens negative intergroup attitudes and makes individuals willing toconcede separation to avoid living alongside outgroup members.

How do experiences of intergroup violenceshape opinions on policies that affectoutgroup members?1 Politically motivated,

episodic violence (including riots, violent protests,and terrorist attacks) is common in developingcountries, but its effects on public opinion areunderstudied. The existing literature suggests twodivergent effects that such violent events can have.On the one hand, intergroup violence may deepenexisting divisions and harden individuals’ resolve toretaliate and reject outgroup demands (Canetti-Nisimet al. 2009; de Waal 2005; Hayes and McAllister 2001).On the other hand, exposure to violence may makeindividuals more willing to support concessions to theoutgroup in order to forestall future violent events(Gould and Klor 2010; Hazlett 2013; Lyall 2009).

In this article, we draw on both of these strandsin the literature as we link individuals’ experiences ofviolence and their political opinions in the context ofa dividing Sudan. In January 2011, some four millionSouth Sudanese voted in a referendum to determine

whether their region should remain part of a unifiedSudan or become an independent state. The referen-dum formed a core part of the Comprehensive PeaceAgreement (CPA), signed between the Government ofSudan and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement(SPLM) in 2005 to end more than two decades ofbrutal civil war. As polls predicted, Southernersvoted overwhelmingly in favor of secession, andSouth Sudan gained independence in July 2011.Northern attitudes toward partition and the status ofSoutherners have been far more divided. This articleexplores this variation in attitudes about the futureof Africa’s largest country using a survey of 1,380randomly sampled residents of greater Khartoum,the sprawling city of eight million that is home tothe vast majority of Southerners living in the North.This unique survey was implemented by the authorsin 2010, with a follow-up in 2011.

We argue that Northerners’ exposure to violencerooted in the conflict with the South shaped theirattitudes toward partition. To test our argument, we

The Journal of Politics, Page 1 of 17, 2014 doi:10.1017/S0022381614000103

� Southern Political Science Association, 2014 ISSN 0022-3816

1Support for this research was provided by the British Academy and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees(UNHCR). An online appendix containing supplementary information for this article is available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0022381614000103. Data and supporting materials needed to reproduce the numerical results will be made available at http://dx.doi.org/10.7910/DVN/24017 on publication. An earlier version circulated under the title ‘‘Who Supports Partition? Violence and PoliticalAttitudes in a Dividing Sudan.’’

1

explore the effects of variation in exposure to violenceduring a spontaneous riot in Khartoum in 2005,triggered by an unforeseen event—the sudden deathof the SPLM’s leader John Garang in a helicoptercrash. In the immediate aftermath of Garang’s death,thousands of Southerners in Khartoum took to thestreets, many believing Garang had been assassinated.During the riots, large numbers of civilians werecaught unexpectedly in areas heavily affected byviolence, without deliberately selecting into the conflict.By chance, some Northerners were harmed during theriots, while other similar Northerners were not, whichwe argue below affords us a clean way to estimate theeffect of violence on political opinion.

Our analysis shows that exposure to the 2005 riotssignificantly increased support for separation but at thesame time decreased support for Southerners’ rights toretain their citizenship in the North. This suggests thatthe literature’s seemingly divergent claims can be com-plementary, in particular in the context of a secessioniststruggle. Individuals exposed to riot violence are morelikely to support conceding Southern independence,not because they have become more moderate, butbecause they are no longer willing to live in closeproximity to Southerners.

We show that our main result is robust toalternative measures of violence exposure, confiningthe data to various relevant subsamples and a varietyof potential confounding factors. We also address theconcern that residential patterns may confound therelationship between riot exposure and politicalopinions, in the sense that those close to Southernerscould be more likely to support separation butalso more likely to have been affected by the riot.We establish that our core finding is not due to vari-ation in Northern-Southern colocation. We also showthat riot exposure is reported in geographic clusters,consistent with indiscriminate collective violence asopposed to selective attacks against Northerners withcertain political views.

The next section provides intuition for our mainhypotheses linking violence exposure and politicalopinions. We then discuss the 2005 Khartoum riots,describe the survey and sampling design, and presentthe results of our statistical analysis.

Political Violence and Its Effectson Ethnic Divisions

The idea that episodes of intergroup violence exacerbateexisting divisions and erode a sense of common fate

across groups within diverse societies has a long historyin the literature on ethnic conflict (Kaufmann 1996;Posen 1993), but few studies systematically documentthese effects at the level of the individual.2 Violence, theargument goes, charges public discourse with antago-nistic content, produces more rigid boundaries betweenethnic groups (de Waal 2005), and can lead evenmoderate individuals to support exclusionary policies(Canetti-Nisim et al. 2009) and fear the physicalproximity of members of the other group (Fearonand Laitin 2000).3 In their most extreme version, thearguments in this literature suggest that interethnicviolence may harden ethnic boundaries almost irre-versibly, making future cooperation between groupsdifficult, if not impossible.4

Little individual-level research has linked politicalviolence to deteriorating intergroup attitudes andbehaviors, and existing studies have focused largelyon terrorist threats in developed countries such as theUnited States and Israel. Perceptions of terroristthreat have been associated with Jewish Israeli oppo-sition to civil and political rights for Palestinians(Canetti-Nisim, Ariely, and Halperin, 2008), risk-minimizing behaviors in post-9/11 New York(Huddy et al. 2002), as well as negative stereotypingand support for harsh immigration and securitypolicies directed at Arabs in a national sample ofAmericans (Huddy et al. 2005).5 Security threatsappear to fuel intolerance (Wang and Chang 2006)and a willingness to curtail civil liberties (Davis andSilver 2004).

At least three mechanisms underpinning thesefindings have been articulated in the literature.First, security threats may elicit an affective responseof fear and enmity toward the outgroup, whichtranslates into heightened support for exclusionarypolicies (Canetti-Nisim, Ariely, and Halperin 2008;

2Exceptions include Shayo and Zussman (2011), Hayes andMcAllister (2001), Balcells (2012), and Bauer et al. (2011).

3Two commonly cited examples of this process are the ossifica-tion of the Hutu-Tutsi divide due to cycles of ethnic violence andgenocide in Rwanda and Burundi (Prunier, 1995) and thehardening of the previously amorphous division between‘‘Arabs’’ and ‘‘Africans’’ in Darfur as a result of ethnic violencein the 1980s and the genocide in 2003 (de Waal, 2005).

4This argument features prominently in academic and policydebates about the relative merits of power-sharing and partitionas solutions for ethnic conflict (e.g., Kaufmann 1998; Kumar1997). See Sambanis (2000) and Sambanis and Schulhofer-Wohl(2009) for a critical empirical assessment of the argument forpartition.

5For a classic work on the relationship between threat perceptionand increased intolerance, xenophobia, and ethnocentrism, seeLeVine and Campbell (1972).

2 bernd beber, philip roessler, and alexandra scacco

Jarymowicz and Bar-Tal 2006; Marcus 2000). Second,threats can incentivize individuals to support policiesthat appear to mitigate risk, including policies thatimpinge on the rights of minorities (Huddy et al.,2005, 2002). Third, exposure to threat may motivateanxious individuals to reduce uncertainty by supportingsimple political solutions, which tend to target minor-ities and avoid more complex and nuanced strategies ofaccommodation (Bonanno and Jost, 2006).

These existing studies argue that concerns aboutbeing the target of outgroup violence can promptindividuals to support harsh policies toward outgroupmembers. We build on and move beyond this litera-ture in three ways. First, we focus on the effects ofriot violence, not terrorist threats. Riots are a morecommon source of insecurity than terrorist attacks,at least in Africa, but their effects on political opinionare virtually unstudied. From 1990 to 2011, Africancountries with a population greater than one millionexperienced a total of 2,115 riot events killing at least34,500 people, compared to 803 terrorist events killingat least 12,500 people, according to data collected bySalehyan et al. (2012).6 Second, we study the effects ofviolence in a developing country, where physicalsecurity is a central subject of political debate.7 Third,we study the effects of past exposure to actual episodesof intergroup violence as opposed to threats ofpotential future attacks.

Others have begun to investigate the effects ofprior violence on political opinions, and several haveproduced results consistent with the literature onsecurity threats discussed above (Bonanno and Jost2006; Hayes and McAllister 2001). However, analternative finding that links exposure to politicalviolence to moderation and a willingness to makeconcessions to the outgroup has also emerged.8 Forexample, Gould and Klor (2010) show that Israelis

living in close proximity to terror attacks are morewilling to grant territorial concessions to Palestiniansand support a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Lyall (2009) finds that Chechenvillages shelled by Russian forces were less likely toman insurgent attacks, and Hazlett (2013) argues thatexposure to violence has led to war weariness and adesire for peace among surveyed Darfurian refugees.9

The existing literature thus suggests two quitedifferent types of individual-level consequences ofviolence exposure. On the one hand, violence candeepen intergroup divisions and prompt individualsto support retaliatory and uncompromising policiesdirected at the outgroup. On the other hand, violencecan motivate individuals to support policies that mayprevent further conflict through moderation and con-cessions. This article investigates which effect domi-nates in the case of exposure to episodic riot violence.To our knowledge, no existing work has addressed thisquestion, although some of the literature has suggestedthat the effects of different types of violence exposureare in fact similar (Bateson, 2012).

In analyzing the relationship between violenceexposure and political opinions, we focus on a spon-taneous riot that struck Khartoum in 2005. Broughtabout by an unforeseen event, indiscriminate riotingexposed some Northerners to attack but left otherwisesimilar Northerners unaffected, which helps us disen-tangle violence as a cause (rather than as a result) ofintergroup antipathy. Our empirical strategy rests ontwo important features of the riots. First, Northernersexposed to rioting were predominantly victims ratherthan perpetrators during this episode of violence.Second, given their location and other observablecharacteristics, they became riot victims by chance.We consider that Northerners’ riot exposure maybe a function of their location and socioeconomiccharacteristics, and we carefully probe this possibilityin the empirical section below as well as the onlineappendix.

We hypothesize that individuals exposed to theriot will be apprehensive of members of the outgroupand support policies that they believe will best protectthem personally from renewed violence. Such policiesinclude partition as a means to spur the relocation,whether voluntary or forcible, of outgroup members.In fact, we propose that exposure to violence generatessupport for partition even among individuals who arepessimistic about the macropolitical implications of

6We count an event as terrorist if terrorism is identified asa potential event issue. Riot events are all events that are eithertyped as or escalated into an organized or a spontaneous riot. Thetotal number of all (nonriot) anti- and extragovernment violentevents is 2,098 resulting in at least 51,500 fatalities. The SocialConflict in Africa Database (SCAD) Version 3.0 is available athttps://www.strausscenter.org/scad.html.

7Campbell (2003) notes that comparatively little research onattitudes toward outgroup members has been conducted indeveloping countries.

8A more voluminous recent literature has examined the effects ofwartime victimization on ingroup trust, political participation,and capacity for collective action (Bellows and Miguel 2009;Blattman 2009; Gilligan, Pasquale, and Samii 2013; Jha andWilkinson 2012; Voors et al. 2012). We follow this literature inour use of micro level data but expand on it by focusing on theeffects of low-level violence on attitudes across groups.

9In a similar vein, Huddy et al. (2005) find that post-9/11 anxietycorrelates with isolationism and diminished support for aggres-sive military action.

intergroup violence and political attitudes 3

separation. We argue that individuals maximize theirperceived personal safety and will trade off what theywould consider large-scale economic and nationalsecurity setbacks for an opportunity to remove localoutgroup members. (We show statistical evidenceabout the relationship between riot exposure andnational security concerns below, but we discusseconomic concerns in the online appendix.)

Our core hypothesis is that exposure to violencehas a positive effect on support for separation.We highlight and probe the robustness of this findingbecause, at first glance, it could suggest that violenceexposure leads to moderation or recognition of thegrievances, capabilities, and resolve of hostile out-group members, in line with the moderating effectproposed in some of the literature discussed above.However, we argue to the contrary that support forseparation does not indicate moderation but ratherpessimism about the prospect of coexistence withmembers of the outgroup and a desire to perma-nently end personal contact with them.10 To evaluatethis claim, we test the complementary hypothesisthat those exposed to violence will be more likely tofavor denying basic political rights to members ofthe outgroup. In particular, we hypothesize thatriot-exposed Northerners will be more supportiveof withdrawing citizenship from Southerners whoremain in the North. We find that the tendency inthe literature to associate an individual’s willingnessto make concessions with moderation is off themark, at least in the case of exposure to riot violenceand perhaps more broadly. Violence exposure can fuelboth sharp hostility and support for key outgroupobjectives in the same individual. Riot-exposedNortherners in Khartoum are eager to eliminate a per-ceived Southern threat from their daily lives, andpartition becomes a means to accomplish precisely that.

This study also speaks to the literature onsecession, which typically does not discuss publicattitudes toward partition in the ‘‘rump state’’ andfocuses on elite preferences or the demands of theseceding region. We argue here that public opinion inthe nonsecessionist core is worth a careful look, evenif it is a less central driver of conflict than attitudesin the secessionist region. In the Sudanese case,Northern attitudes toward secession matter for twomain reasons. First, a sizable subpopulation of the

Northern respondents we focus on in this study areprecisely those individuals about whom the governmentin Khartoum cares most: Riverine Arabs living inKhartoum. This group forms a core part of PresidentOmar al-Bashir’s winning coalition, and Bashir dependsupon their support if he is to continue to maintain hishold on power. As such, Bashir’s regime has remainedattuned to the sentiments of their Islamist and Arabbase as they have made decisions about compliancewith the terms of the CPA since 2005.

Second, prior exposure to violence works to makethe process of partition itself more costly. The sameunderlying fear and mistrust that make ordinarypeople prefer partition can also make partition moreviolent and tragic. Consider the precarious position ofSoutherners living in the North today. Southernerswere stripped of their citizenship rights in early 2012,and they face intimidation and violence in their dailylives. Much of this violence has been perpetrated at thegrassroots level, underpinned by the hostile opinionsof North Sudanese toward Southerners in theaftermath of Sudan’s partition.

Those who do address the question of popularsupport for partition in the core state emphasize theimportance of potential economic costs, either inthe form of lost income from secessionist regions(Bartkus, 1999; Collier and Hoeffler 2006) or risingcosts of public-goods provision within a now smallerrump state (Buchanan and Faith 1987). Given accu-mulating evidence that regions with access to naturalresources or other sources of wealth are more likely tomake secessionist demands (Collier and Hoeffler 2006;Morelli and Rohner 2010; Ross 2004; Sambanis andMilanovic 2011), one should expect the economicconsequences of partition to weigh heavily on indi-viduals considering the costs and benefits of territorialdivision.

A second explanation for resistance to secessionistclaims suggests that the material value of a break-awayregion is less important than concerns about futuresecessionist conflicts elsewhere within an existing state(Walter, 2006).11 According to this argument, govern-ments who anticipate future challenges, such as govern-ments in states with multiple territorially concentratedethnic groups, will attempt to build a reputation asunyielding to sovereignty demands. Ordinary individ-uals, too, could fear that the loss of one region increasesthe chance that other regions will secede, leading to thefurther disintegration of their state.

10See also Sambanis and Shayo (2013) for a model thatformalizes the logic of reinforcing patterns of violence andself-identification. They show that under certain conditionspeaceful interethnic relations can persist as the circumstancesthat enabled such relations change.

11See also Tir (2005), who finds that rump states are more likelyto experience post-partition conflict than secessionist states.


Both arguments suggest reasons for Sudan (a multi-ethnic country with a history of peripheral rebellions)to oppose the secession of South Sudan (a regionholding 75% of the country’s oil fields and pro-duction). But while such considerations matter toordinary citizens, we argue that public attitudes arealso shaped by episodes of violent confrontationswith members of the seceding population. We contendthat individuals in the rump state will be more likely tosupport separation, in spite of its potentially negativeeconomic or broader national security consequences,if they perceive partition will enhance their personalphysical security. Northerners exposed to riotingSoutherners will favor policies that will removeSoutherners from their daily lives and therefore willbe more likely to support separation, no matter thepotential national-level consequences.

Black Monday and NorthernAttitudes toward Partition

Northern Sudanese generally refer to the riots thatshook Khartoum in the aftermath of John Garang’sdeath as ‘‘Black Monday,’’ although the violencecontinued for some 48 hours into early Wednesday.John Garang, the leader of the SPLM and Sudan’sfirst Vice President at the time of his death on July 30,2005, was en route from Uganda to Southern Sudanwhen his helicopter crashed in an apparent accident.While many Southerners remain suspicious of the cir-cumstances surrounding the crash, available evidencedoes not suggest that Garang was assassinated. At thetime of the crash, the helicopter was passing througha violent storm on the Ugandan side of the border(Africa Confidential 2005, 2), and neither the SPLMleadership nor Sudanese elites have agitated for theview that foul play was involved.

Garang’s sudden and unexpected death shockedmany Sudanese, not simply those from South Sudan.Only three weeks before the helicopter crash, Garanghad received a hero’s welcome in Khartoum when hereturned to the capital for the first time since thesecond civil war began in 1983. Garang’s death alsoseems to have caught the government in Khartoumoff-guard. The government initially stalled and claimedthat Garang was alive, but it revised this report after24 hours, which increased uncertainty surroundingthe circumstances of his death (International CrisisGroup 2005, 2). The news was devastating for manySoutherners. Rumors immediately began to spreadthat the Northern government was responsible for

Garang’s death, and Southerners across Khartoumbegan to riot.

The violence began in the central market indowntown Khartoum and quickly spread to theouter neighborhoods of the capital (Medani 2005).While security forces quickly restored order in theheart of the capital, the riots intensified in the outerneighborhoods. Hardest-hit areas included the pri-marily working-class neighborhoods of Al Kalaklain Khartoum, El Fitehab in Omdurman, and HajYousif in Bahri (International Crisis Group 2005;Medani 2005). Figure 1 shows the location of theseareas (marked with a hatch pattern) relative to theadministrative units included in our survey sample.After an initial wave of violence by Southerners andsome ethnic Nuba (non-Arab Northerners from theperipheral Nuba Mountains region, some of whomfought with Southern forces during the war), a smallnumber of Northerners also took to the streets toretaliate.12 The relatively small number of Northernparticipants in the rioting is consistent with the ideathat those Northerners exposed to the riot violencewere overwhelmingly victims rather than perpetratorsduring this event. In total, roughly 130 people werekilled, more than 1,000 were injured, and thousands ofprivate properties were destroyed (International CrisisGroup, 2005; Medani, 2005).

Without question, the Khartoum riots were limitedin scope compared to the decades of brutal violencecarried out during Sudan’s post-colonial civil wars.In spite of this fact, the survey evidence we presentsuggests that these riots had significant and lastingeffects for many Khartoum residents. The riots rep-resented the first time since the second civil warbegan in 1983 that the violence that ravaged theSouth (and peripheral parts of North Sudan) camedirectly to Khartoum. In-depth interviews suggestBlack Monday, an unexpected and emotionally chargedevent, became a ‘‘flashbulb memory’’ (Brown and Kulik1977) for many in Khartoum who remember vividlywhere they were and what happened to them as theriots unfolded.13

12For an in-depth look at the origins of Nuba resistance toNorthern governance, their historical alliance with the SPLM,and the current conflict in the Nuba Mountains, see InternationalCrisis Group (2013).

13However, the Khartoum riots did not cause the referendumprocess that eventually led to Southern independence. The CPA,which provided for the referendum, was signed in January 2005,more than six months before Garang’s death. The onlineappendix includes additional information and interview quotesrelated to the Black Monday riots.


In the words of a Northern respondent namedMohammed:

‘‘I remember the day of the riots like it was yesterday.The fighting started in the morning, after I droppedmy kids at school in Omdurman and drove acrossthe White Nile Bridge into central Khartoum. As theviolence spread throughout the day, I became veryworried about my kids. I rushed back to the school topick them up and take them home. On the way homefrom the school, in the back-streets of Omdurman, wecame across a group of angry rioters from South Sudanwho were blocking the road. I quickly turned our cararound and chose a different route.’’14

When public debate in Khartoum over Southernseparation reached its height in late 2010, Mohammedfirmly supported partition: ‘‘We may lose the South’soil wealth but at least we won’t have to waste resourceson fighting against the South anymore, and without

the instability Southerners are causing, we can livein peace.’’

We are not the first to suggest that the Khartoumriots had a profound impact on North-South relations.According to Young (2005), the riots ‘‘had the effect ofdriving the wedge further into the divide betweenNortherners and Southerners, between Arabs andAfricans. Thus moderate Northerners sometimesconcluded that it was neither possible nor desirableto have Southerners and Northerners under one roof,while others from the North expressed the viewthat the abed (slaves, a pejorative term applied toSoutherners) should either behave themselves orreturn to the South’’ (2005, 538).15

FIGURE 1 Riot Distribution Khartoum

14Interview, Khartoum, July, 2010.

15The Arabic ‘‘abd’’ is commonly used to express servitude toAllah (as in Abdullah, servant of God), but the term and its plural‘‘abeed’’ are also used to derogatorily refer to ‘‘black’’ SouthSudanese (Deng 1995, 5).


Survey and sampling design

The data for this article comes from a survey of arepresentative sample of 1,380 individuals from fiveadministrative units (AUs) in greater Khartoum.Greater Khartoum consists of the 23 out of 36 AUsin Khartoum State that contain any urban residentialpopulation according to Sudan’s 2008 census, andit encompasses the three historic cities of Bahri,Omdurman, and Khartoum at the confluence of theNile. We conducted an initial round of interviews inNovember and December 2010, prior to the SouthSudanese referendum on independence, and a follow-upin the fall of 2011, after Southern independence had beenrealized. Our analysis below uses the data from 2010,except when we make explicit use of additional informa-tion collected in 2011 to test the robustness of our results.

Khartoum is popularly described as a microcosmof Sudan, and it is an attractive survey site in that weare likely to sample respondents from a broad cross-section of Sudanese society as a whole.16 Residents ofKhartoum also constitute the segment of Sudan’spopulation on whose support the authoritarianSudanese government around President Bashir reliesmost heavily, so the popular sentiments that oursurvey identifies are more likely to have a visible impacton government policy than similar sentiments in othercities.17

Respondents were selected using a multistagestratified cluster-sampling procedure.18 We randomlysampled 62 popular administrative units (PAUs)within five randomly chosen administrative units andselected households within PAUs by drawing targetcoordinates that were located by GPS-equipped enu-merators in the field. Enumerators then asked the headof each sampled household to construct a roster ofadult household members, and individual respondentswere sampled from this roster.19 Enumerators stressed

the project’s lack of any political affiliation and therandom selection of respondents and provided detailsabout measures taken to protect respondents from anykind of retaliation. Most respondents (87%) agreed toparticipate. About 84% of those who agreed to par-ticipate in the survey also agreed to be contacted forinterviews in the future and shared a range of contactinformation (local address, GPS coordinates, informa-tion on ancestral home, contact details for severalnonhousehold relations).

Enumerators frequently reported that respondentswere initially apprehensive. Surveys by most interna-tional organizations, such as recent intention-to-migratesurveys by the UNHCR and the InternationalOrganization for Migration (IOM), require supervisionby Sudan’s Humanitarian Aid Commission (HAC),which generally takes the form of minders who accom-pany enumerators. This was an important reason whywe completed all survey work in-house, with our ownstaff, who obtained necessary permissions from local,non-HAC authorities.20

We took a series of additional measures to protectrespondents (and enumerators), who could be at riskof being suspected that they participated in violentaction in the past or who could hold political opinionsthat could make them a target of violent groups orSudanese state authorities, and enumerators wereinstructed to provide a detailed description of thesemeasures to respondents.21 These measures aim tomake it impossible for anyone in Sudan, includingenumerators and investigators, to link particular setsof responses to specific individuals, generic respondentprofiles, or even other sets of responses from the samesubject.

Three steps are particularly important. First, ourstaff was not allowed to observe a respondent’s answersto potentially sensitive questions while administeringthe survey, but the relevant response sheet was com-pleted by the subject him- or herself. While an enu-merator read each question and the available responseoptions (because many subjects do not know how toread), the subject marked the appropriate box in

16See, for example, Gwen Thompkins, ‘‘Khartoum, Sudan’sCosmopolitan Epicenter’’ (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId592621314).

17A complementary representative sample of residents of Kosti inthe border state of White Nile was lost when state security failedto accept permits issued by the governor and other localauthorities on the first scheduled day of survey administration.

18Refer to this article’s online appendix for details.

19All interview materials were available in Sudanese Arabic andEnglish, Sudan’s two official languages. Most interviews wereconducted in Arabic. Our team included enumerators from all ofSudan’s principal regions of origin, who spoke a variety ofadditional languages, including various dialects of the Fur, Dinka,and Nuba, and who assisted respondents with limited or noknowledge of the official languages.

20Our staff obtained permits from PAU, AU, and localityauthorities. Localities are groupings of AUs within states.

21Instructions and a range of other survey-related materials areavailable at http://dx.doi.org/10.7910/DVN/24112. We obtainedIRB approval or an institutional equivalent from New YorkUniversity, the University of Oxford, and the University ofKhartoum. The University of Khartoum provided guidanceunder the aegis of the relevant dean and an Advisory Committeeof faculty members established for this project.


private. Upon completion, the respondent placedthe response sheet in an envelope among other(possibly decoy) response sheets. Second, any po-tentially sensitive responses and contact informationwere physically separated from each other and froma respondent’s other answers. Response sets can belinked by matching separate identifiers generated foreach respondent, but the required key makes itimpossible for someone who obtains survey sheetsto link sensitive information to specific individualsor broad participant profiles. Third, we restrictedcirculation of the document containing potentiallysensitive questions. Even if someone was able toobtain survey responses to sensitive questions, theseresponses would consist of checked boxes and wouldbe meaningless without the relevant survey instru-ment. By controlling the distribution of questionsheets, we minimize the possibility of unauthorizedaccess to sensitive information.

Results

We are interested in Northern respondents’ attitudestoward partition and their views on the status thatought to be conferred on Southerners who choose toremain in the North. Figure 2 presents variation intwo key outcome variables for three categories ofrespondents: Northerners, which our analysis focuseson; Nuba, a non-Arab ethnic group from the North’ssouthern periphery, many of whom supported theSPLA during the war but were sidelined during thenegotiations that led to the CPA; and Southerners,who we exclude from later analysis but shown here

for the sake of comparison.22 We show results forNuba respondents separately to highlight the highdegree of similarity between them and those forNorthern respondents more generally, despite thegroup’s historical ties to the South.

The first panel shows responses to the questionwhether the respondent supports unity of Northand South Sudan or separation for the South.23

Among Northerners, 12% support secession of theSouth. We see comparable support among Nuba,which could be a backward-looking reaction to apeace agreement that generated few benefits forthe Nuba or a forward-looking realization thatthey are set to lose a key partner in extractingconcessions from Khartoum for the periphery.Even among Southerners, a plurality (47%) voicessupport for unity. We suspect that many Southernerswho answered ‘‘don’t know’’ or refused to provide ananswer are in fact supporters of separation, but we findour results otherwise broadly consistent with referen-dum returns, which showed that 42% of votes cast inthe North were in favor of unity.24

FIGURE 2 Descriptive Statistics: Attitudes toward Partition and Citizenship for Southerners

22A table with sample and estimated population proportions ofthese subgroups is available in the online appendix.

23All survey items discussed in this article are introduced usingessentially the same wording as was used in interviews withsubjects. The exact wording of all questions and response optionscan be found in the online appendix.

24Josh Kron and Jeffrey Gettleman, ‘‘South Sudanese VoteOverwhelmingly for Secession,’’ The New York Times (January21, 2011). We would expect greater support for unity in a randomsample of Southerners in Khartoum than a sample of voters, dueto depressed turnout of those favoring unity in a referendum thatwas anticipated to yield separation.


The second panel of Figure 2 shows respond-ents’ views on whether Southerners living inthe North should be allowed to retain theirSudanese nationality after separation. Northernersare roughly divided on this question. More star-tling is the fact that this is also true for respond-ents from the Nuba Mountains and even theSouth, who may want to ensure that Southernerscollectively return and contribute to a newlyformed South Sudan.

Riot Exposure and Support for Separation

We now ask how rioting by Southernersin Khartoum in 2005 affected non-Southerners’attitudes toward separation. We code respondentsas having been affected by the riots if theyanswered ‘‘yes’’ to a question that asked whetherthere was any fighting in their neighborhood

during the August 2005 riots in Khartoum.25 Thisform of riot exposure was widespread, with anestimated 45% of non-Southerners reporting thisto be the case.

The first column of Table 1 shows results froma basic probit model of a respondent’s support forseparation, which includes only location and groupindicators in addition to our independent variable ofinterest. We find a strong and significant effect of riotexposure: support for separation (which takes thevalue of 1 if the respondent favors separation and0 otherwise) is positively related to whether re-spondents reported having been affected by the2005 Khartoum riots. Even more than five years afterthe Khartoum riots, the extent to which respondentswere exposed to the unrest reverberates in their

TABLE 1 Effect of Riot Exposure on Support for Separation

Probit Model

Dependent Variable: Support Separation

(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6)

Fighting in neighborhood .369(.180)**

.547(.185)***

.470(.182)**

.530(.195)***

.564(.181)***

.806(.203)***

Gender -.792(.267)***

-.543(.242)**

-.560(.243)**

-.926(.280)***

-.384(.259)

Age .002(.006)

.006(.006)

-.001(.008)

-.0003(.008)

.005(.006)

Working -.620(.358)*

-.689(.347)*

Self-employed .172(.352)

.254(.308)

Asset index -.187(.119)

-.281(.107)

Relative wealth -.025(.111)

.028(.116)

Education (log) -.124(.122)

-.093(.130)

Father’s educ. (log) -.051(.110)

.005(.122)

Paved roads -.056(.216)

Electricity .602(.365)

Piped water -.421(.406)

Cell service 1.079(.333)***

Observations 940 870 848 838 729 815

Note: All models include AU and region of origin indicators. *p # .10, **p # .05, ***p # .01.

25We discuss and use additional measures of riot exposure laterin the article.


responses to questions about the country’s status.26

Not only is this a testament to the magnitude of BlackMonday in the eyes of many Northerners,27 but it alsoreflects the fact that the referendum, conducted justafter we completed the survey, is linked to the CPA,which was signed and heavily debated in Khartoum inthe months leading up to John Garang’s fatefulhelicopter trip and subsequent violence.

In the remaining columns of Table 1, we showthat the estimate persists and in fact increases whenwe include a variety of potentially confounding factorsin addition to the location and group indicatorsalready included in the first specification.28 This isconsistent with reports that Southerners directed theiranger at the relatively privileged riverine elite, whosebaseline support for separation is low compared toother Northerners: the kind of limited targeting that

observers noted amid the chaos of the riots biases ourestimation against the positive effect of riot exposureon support for partition that we find, and our estimatesin fact become larger as we adjust for socioeconomiccovariates. The substantive effect of riot exposure onsupport for separation is large and ranges from 7 to 13percentage points across these specifications.29

Table 2 shows results from three different kindsof robustness checks, each shown in a separate panel.The models in panel A show that the effect holds acrossrelevant subsamples: First, we exclude Nuba, since manyNuba aligned themselves with the Southern SudaneseSPLA during the Second Civil War. Second, we limitthe sample to respondents who trace their origin to theNorth-Central region and exclude not only respondentsfrom the Nuba Mountains, but also those from Darfur,Kordofan, the East, and elsewhere. Third, we furtherlimit the sample to members of the three main riverineArab tribes, the Danagla, the Jaliyyin, and the Shaygiyya,which have dominated the central government sinceindependence (El-Tom, 2002) and are especially likelyto be associated with Sudan’s political elite.30

The second set of robustness checks shown inpanel B indicates that our results are not driven byparticular modeling decisions. In column (4), we showthat our results do not depend on efficiency gainsassociated with our stratified sampling design. Column(5) addresses the concern that we have ignored thosewho ‘‘don’t know’’ about their support for unity orseparation by coding such responses as an intermediatevalue and estimating an ordered probit model. Again,the result persists. Finally, column (6) responds tothe worry that the listwise deletion of observationsfor which any data is missing could introduce biasin our estimates. We multiply impute missingvalues on any of the control variables, performestimation on a now larger set of observations,and obtain an estimate of essentially the same sizeand with about the same standard error.

26It is conceivable that respondents with negative attitudes towardSoutherners are more likely to recall or falsely claim that they werevictimized by Southerners during the 2005 riot. This kind ofmeasurement bias is a challenge in any survey research. While wecannot rule out the possibility, we believe this is not a major problemin our case, for three reasons. First, we spaced survey questions sothat respondents were asked about the riot about three dozenquestions after they were asked their views on separation, citizenship,and the prospects for peace, in order to minimize the chance thatrespondents’ expressed political views would prime them to (perhapsfalsely) report riot exposure. We sequenced questions in this way inorder to ensure that measured differences in political opinion couldbe attributed to riot exposure itself as opposed to being remindedabout one’s riot exposure by a preceding survey question. Second,political attitudes were recorded by subjects themselves, so that theywould have no incentive to justify anti-Southern views to enumer-ators by claiming that Southerners harmed them during the riot.Third, respondents were not asked to self-identify as victims ortargets of the riot, but they were asked factual questions (whetherthere was fighting in their neighborhood, they were physicallyinjured, lost a job, etc.) in order to gauge their riot exposure, whichshould reduce differential recall or false victimization claims.

27In the lead-up to the referendum, the events of ‘‘BlackMonday’’ became a rallying cry for some Northern hard-liners,especially Al-Tayeb Mustafa, the uncle of Sudan’s PresidentBashir and owner of one of the most widely read newspapersin Khartoum, Al-Intibaha. Mustafa regularly invoked the riots asevidence that Northerners and Southerners could not livetogether. However, we do not find evidence in our empiricalanalysis that the effect of riot exposure on support for partition isconditional on getting news from Al-Intibaha, nor is reading Al-Intibaha a significant correlate of support for separation.

28The work indicator is ternary, with values for full-time, part-time,and no employment. Self-employment is a self-reported binaryvariable. The asset index is the first factor from a factor analysis of13 wealth indicators (refrigerator, radio, television, mobile phone,non-mobile phone, computer, Internet access, satellite dish, mat-tress, bicycle, motorcycle or scooter, and car or truck). The relativewealth measure captures how respondents compared their house-hold’s wealth to others in their neighborhood, on a 4-point scale.Education is measured in log-years. The presence of any pavedroads, an electricity grid, a piped water system, and cell-phoneservice in a respondent’s PAU was recorded by an enumerator.

29A basic comparison of weighted proportions yields a similarestimate: 17% of those who report riot exposure supportseparation, compared to 10% of those who do not.

30The results also holds if we exclude anyone who has not been intheir current neighborhood since before the riot. This is notsurprising given that displacement due to Black Monday wasminimal and reported by only two of our non-Southern surveyrespondents. We do not observe any spike in relocation after theriot: 18% of respondents report having moved into theirneighborhood between 2005 and 2010 (6% in the riot year2005 and post-riot 2006), compared to 15% in the previous sixyears (and 5% in pre-riot 2003 and 2004). We also find that theshare of individuals who have moved into Al Boogha since 2005is lower than it is for Abuanja, even though the former sawsignificantly less violence on Black Monday.


Residential Patterns and the Effectof Riot Exposure

While we have accounted for basic location effectsby including administrative-unit fixed effectsthroughout the analysis, one could still be con-cerned that residential patterns are confounding therelationship between riot exposure and support forseparation. Perhaps those who live close to South-erners are more likely to have been affected by theriot, but they are also either more likely to besympathetic to Southerners’ demand for partitionbecause they have interacted with them regularly orare particularly keen on removing Southerners from

their area of residence and support partition for thisreason. Panel C in Table 2 shows that our results arerobust to variation in respondents’ proximity toSoutherners. In columns (7) and (8), we includerespondents’ assessment of the share of South-erners in their neighborhood as a control variable(in one column excluding responses of ‘‘don’tknow’’ and in the other coding them as zero). Incolumn (9), we exclude any respondent who says thatSoutherners account for a double-digit percentageshare of the neighborhood. Columns (10) and (11)take the same respondent assessments but averagethem within each PAU and include the average asa control variable. Finally, column (12) includes the

TABLE 2 Robustness of the Effect of Riot Exposure on Support for Separation

Probit Model, unless Specified Otherwise


Panel A: Robustness to Different Subsamples

(1) (2) (3)Sample Excl. Nuba North-Central only Riverine Arabs only

Fighting in neighborhood .725(.196)***

.540(.225)**

.615(.276)**

Observations 566 326 166

Panel B: Robustness to Different Modeling Approaches

(4) (5) (6)Model Ignore survey design Ordered probit Multiple imputation


.409(.178)**

.518(.168)***


Panel C: Robustness to Effects of Residential Patterns

(7) (8) (9)Robustness check Incl. respondent

estimate of Southernneighborhood share

Incl. respondentestimate, code ‘‘don’tknow’’ as zero

Excl. if respondentestimate is 10%or higher


.639(.195)***

.695(.288)**


(10) (11) (12)Robustness check Incl. PAU-level average

respondent estimateIncl. PAU-level average,code ‘‘don’t know’’as zero

Incl. Southern share ofPAU-level sample


519(.158)***

.562(.178)***


Note: Models include gender, age, employment and self-employment indicators, asset index, relative wealth, logged years of education,logged years of father’s education, and AU and region of origin indicators. Due to sample limitations, model (3) does not include AUindicators. **p # .05, ***p # .01.


PAU-level share of Southerners that we actuallyobserve in our sample as a proxy for the prevalenceof Southerners in any respondent’s neighborhood.Across all of these specifications, the effect of riotexposure varies only minimally and retains statisticaland substantive significance.31

Alternative Measures of Violence Exposure

One question that remains is how sensitive our resultsare to how we measure exposure to violence in general

and riot exposure in particular. The consequences ofa riot surely differ from those of a prolonged civil war,although Panel A of Table 3 suggests that riot exposureand exposure to the war with the SPLA may be similarin their effects on support for separation, at leastfor a plausible subsample of respondents: column (1)indicates no effect of war exposure across allNortherners, but column (2) shows an effect forindividuals of North-Central origin, the coreconstituency of the SPLA’s primary war opponent,the government in Khartoum.32 We exclude thosewho fought in the war in column (3), since exposure

TABLE 3 Alternative Measures of Violence Exposure

Probit Model


Panel A: Effect of Wartime Exposure to Violence

(1) (2) (3)

Sample All Northerners North-Central onlyNorth-Central only,

excl. soldiers

Affected by war in South .117(.243)

.628(.243)**

.647(.257)**


(4) (5)Sample North-Central only All Northerners, excl.

those affected bywar with South

Affected by war in Darfur .255(.236)


Observations 341 277

Panel B: Effect of Direct and Indirect Riot Exposure

(6) (7) (8)Sample All Northerners All Northerners Excl. those who were

indirectly but notdirectly exposed

Riot exposure, direct only .307(.254)

.558(.276)**

Riot exposure, direct and indirect .573(.256)**


Note: Models (l)-(5) include gender, age, employment and self-employment indicators, asset index, relative wealth, logged years ofeducation, logged years of father’s education, and AU and region of origin indicators. Models (6)-(8) use the sample from the follow-upround and include gender, age, pre-riot employment and self-employment indicators, asset index, relative wealth, logged years ofeducation, logged years of father’s education, and AU and region of origin indicators. **p # .05.

31We can also show that the effect of riot exposure on support forseparation is robust even if we assume that we have omitted anunobservable variable that is correlated with both the outcome andthe independent variable of interest. Results from an appropriatesensitivity analysis are included in the online appendix.

32A respondent is coded as having been affected by the war with theSouth if he or she was physically injured or displaced, lost a job,business, or property, was separated from familymembers or friends,orhada familymemberor friendwhowasphysically injuredorkilled.


to violence could affect perpetrators and victimsdifferently, without any change in the result.

At the same time, it is not the case that exposureto any type of violence correlates with increasedsupport for partition, but only violence that actuallyoriginates with the relevant actors, here Southerners:column (4) shows that respondents affected by thewar in Darfur are not more likely to support grantingindependence to the South.33 We also show, incolumn (5), that this does not imply that riotexposure simply rekindles memories of the war, withthe positive effect of riot exposure on support forseparation a spurious corollary. In fact, riot expo-sure is positively correlated with support forpartition even if we exclude any respondentsaffected by the war with the South. These resultshint at similarities in the effects of wartime andriot violence, which we hope future research willcontinue to explore.

We have so far measured riot exposure in termsof whether a respondent reported fighting in his orher neighborhood during the Black Monday unrest,which is the riot-related item we were able to askduring the initial round of data collection in 2010.This raises the question to what extent the estimatedeffect on support for partition captures the effect ofbeing personally attacked and to what extent it capturesthe effect of people in the respondent’s neighborhoodbeing attacked more generally. We now show thatexposure of others in one’s neighborhood is sufficientto produce the estimated change in separation-relatedattitudes, using additional data from a second round ofinterviews conducted in late 2011. During these inter-views, we collected a detailed record of respondents’direct exposure to the violence of Black Monday, albeitfor a smaller sample. We then construct two measuresshown in panel B of Table 3: First, we code eachrespondent as having been directly affected if he or shewas physically injured or displaced, lost a job, hadproperty damaged, was separated from family membersor friends, or had a family member or friend who wasphysically injured or killed in the course of the riots.Second, we create a measure of indirect exposure, whichis the spatially predicted level of riot exposure for arespondent given the extent to which others in the areawere affected. We essentially construct a heat map asin Figure 1 of direct riot exposure and then assign toeach individual a predicted exposure level, which isa distance-weighted function of the exposure of all non-

Southern respondents around him or her.34 Figure 1displays the geographical distribution of direct riotexposure, where the share of respondents that reportriot exposure is lowest in light gray areas and reaches itshighest levels in dark gray areas. The heat map showsdistinct riot clusters in Abuanja, Haj Yousif, andAl Shajara, consistent with relatively indiscriminate,collectively targeted violence as opposed to violencedirected at specific individuals (which mitigates theconcern that rioters might have selectively targetedNortherners supportive of partition, such as theiremployers).

We also used the second round of interviews toask respondents to provide information about theircircumstances at the time of the signing of the CPA inJanuary 2005, roughly six months prior to the riot.We obtained this pre-riot information for all of thecontrol variables that we have used, and panel B ofTable 3 now includes only pre-riot covariates. Whilethis helps address concerns about the post-riot mea-surement of control variables that could be affectedby riot exposure, note that respondents’ recollectionof contextual information from 2005 could itself bea function of riot exposure.

Column (6) of Table 3 shows that direct riotexposure is positively but insignificantly correlatedwith support for separation, but we recover an effectonce we account for the fact, as we do in column (7),that respondents could be affected indirectly: we nowchange riot exposure to a person’s indirect exposurelevel for anyone who was not directly affected. Thatis, we are able to validate the article’s main result withdata that was collected after our initial analysis andthat records specific kinds of riot exposure as opposedto a subjective overall assessment of exposure, providedwe aggregate data to a level that roughly corresponds tothe neighborhood, the same level at which subjectsprovided their initial exposure assessments.

We contend that direct riot exposure returns astatistically insignificant result because indirect exposureis sufficient to fuel anti-Southern (and pro-partition)sentiments: There are too many respondents includedin column (6) who were not directly affected but aresurrounded by those who were and hence are also morelikely to support separation. Column (8) providesevidence that this is indeed the case: individuals whowere directly affected by the riots are significantly

33We show the estimate for North-Central respondents tofacilitate the comparison of columns (2) and (4), but the sameresult obtains for all Northerners.

34More precisely, we compute predicted values for all respondentlocations from an ordinary kriging estimation, provided there are atleast three data points within a radius of 500 meters. We modelspatial correlation with a spherical model with nugget .2 and range12 kilometers, which plausibly fits the empirical variogram. For moreinformation, see Pebesma (2004) and Diggle and Ribeiro (2006).


more likely to support separation than those whowere affected neither directly nor indirectly, with aneffect size comparable to the effect of fighting in theneighborhood.

Riot Exposure and Support for CitizenshipRights for Southerners

We hypothesized that those affected by Black Mondaywould not only support separation to a greaterextent but would also advocate for tough measuresagainst Southerners who decide to stay in the North.Their increased support for separation is not a signof moderation or a newfound understanding ofSouthern aspirations and capabilities, but ratherthe result of a recognition that sharing one countryhas become an unpalatable option. Table 4 pro-vides evidence for this claim by analyzing whetherrespondents thought Southerners should be permitted

to retain their nationality after partition. The effect ofhaving been affected by the riot is now negative andsignificant at the 95% level across specifications. Riotexposure is among the largest statistically significantcorrelates of low support for Southerners’ citizenshiprights among all of the factors that we account for inthis analysis.35

The Effect of Riot Exposure onSecurity Concerns

Riot-exposed individuals also appear disproportionatelypessimistic about the likely effect of separation on thesecurity situation of the country as a whole, as shown inthe first two columns of Table 5: they are 12 percentage

TABLE 4 Effect of Riot Exposure on Support for Southerners Being Able to Retain Citizenship

Probit Model

Dependent Variable: Support Southerners Being Able to Retain Citizenship

(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6)

Fighting in neighborhood -.425(.181)**

-.415(.160)**

-.408(.194)**

-.433(.185)**

-.433(.196)**

-.516(.199)**

Gender -.151(.175)

-.029(.181)

-.142(.165)

-.069(.229)

-.242(.171)

Age .002(.006)

-.003(.007)

-.001(.007)

-.001(.008)

-.001(.006)

Working -.259(.212)

-.152(.265)

Self-employed .367(.249)

.363(.289)

Asset index -.047(.138)

-.109(.147)

Relative wealth -.225(.125)*

-.198(.131)

Education (log) -.134(.121)

-.112(.152)

Father’s educ. (log) -.036(.090)

-.002(.098)

Paved roads .171(.195)

Electricity -.132(.269)

Piped water -.026(.441)

Cell service .610(.363)

Observations 842 778 765 745 647 731

Note: All models include AU and region of origin indicators. Sample includes all Northerners. *p # .10, **p # .05.

35Being of Nuba origin translates into strong support for lettingSoutherners retain citizenship, with coefficient estimates rangingfrom .303 (.275) to .654 (.257) across models.


points more likely to think other regions will call forself-determination if the South separates, and, amongrespondents of North-Central origin, they are 9 pointsless likely to say that separation will help maintain peacein North Sudan. We find no evidence that riot-affectedindividuals support separation because they thinkpartition will minimize conflict in Sudan as a whole;if anything, they are more likely to think that partitionwill have the opposite effect. Yet riot-affected North-Central respondents also strongly believe that partitionwill lead to improvements in physical security forthemselves, as shown in column (3).

In combination, the results in Table 5 suggestthat riot-scarred Northern Sudanese are navigatinga trade-off between the proximal and the peripheralconsequences of Southern secession. They are dis-proportionately weary that simmering conflicts likethe one in the Nuba Mountains can escalate if theSouth is let go—not just because the partition couldrekindle the determination of insurgents but alsobecause the government in Khartoum has ramped upits efforts to brutally extinguish peripheral dissent.But peripheral conflicts have plagued Sudan for decadeswithout many disruptions to life in the capital. Themore proximate effect of secession would be the defacto removal of large numbers of Southerners who diddisrupt life in Khartoum in 2005 and a correspondingimprovement in perceived physical security at the locallevel. When faced with this trade-off, riot-affectedNortherners tend to favor separation.

Conclusion

This article laid out an argument for how exposure toepisodic political violence can affect people’s politicalopinions and increase support for separation, not

because they become more moderate but because theyare no longer willing to live with outgroup membersin a multiethnic setting. We suggested that theunplanned riot that shook Khartoum in 2005exposed Northerners to violence in a way that allowsus to make inferences about its effects. The articlethen introduced an original survey dataset collectedby the authors with a team of research assistants inKhartoum around the time when voters cast theirballots in favor of an independent South Sudan.This survey provides, to our knowledge, the onlyindependently collected public political opiniondata for greater Khartoum at this critical momentin Sudanese history. Finally, we presented the empiricalargument that riot exposure correlates with heightenedsupport for partition. We also presented evidence tosuggest that riot-affected Northerners who supportSouthern independence do so not out of an improvedappreciation of Southern goals or a belief that partitionwill bring peace to Sudan, but because they hope todisplace potentially threatening Southerners that remainin Khartoum.

There is a potentially troubling implication to thesefindings. Would-be secessionists might see violence asan effective strategy to sway public opinion in favor ofpartition. However, recent research on secessions sug-gests that this type of violence can have negativeconsequences in the long run, as peaceful partitionsare more likely to result in post-separation peace thantheir violent counterparts (Tir, 2005).

Our research suggests several avenues for futureresearch. We have shown that violence exposure in2005 continued to affect Northern political attitudesfive years later, but it is reasonable to ask if this effectwill decay over time and at what rate. More generally,we believe future research should consider partitionas a dynamic process. For example, few quantitative

TABLE 5 Effect of Riot Exposure on Beliefs about Peace and Security

Probit Model

Dependent Variable

Believe that separationwill lead to otherregions calling forself-determination

Believe that separationwill help maintain

peace in North Sudan

Believe that separation willhave positive effect onown physical security

(1) (2) (3)Sample All Northerners North-Central only North-Central only


-.377(.216)*

.685(.200)***


Note: Models include gender, age, employment and self-employment indicators, asset index, relative wealth, logged years of education,logged years of father’s education, and AU and region of origin indicators. *p # .10, **p # .05, ***p # .01.


studies examine the impact of partition on ethnicminorities trapped on the ‘‘wrong’’ side of a newlycreated international border. How will Southernersliving in Khartoum adapt to changed, and often lesshospitable, political circumstances? Under what con-ditions do minorities decide to remain in the rumpstate or migrate to the newly created secessioniststate? Do Southerners who stay adopt strategies tosignal their loyalty to the post-partition state or toappear more ‘‘Northern’’ in everyday social life?What is the impact of partition on members of othernon-Arab minority groups who have lost a major allyas a result of Southern independence? We will continueto explore these questions using the panel design ofour survey, and we will probe the political and socialconsequences of separation in both rump andsecessionist states as the process of partition unfoldsover time.

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Bernd Beber is Assistant Professor in theDepartment of Politics at New York University,New York, NY 10012.

Philip Roessler is Assistant Professor in theGovernment Department at the College of William& Mary, Williamsburg, VA 23187.

Alexandra Scacco is Assistant Professor in theDepartment of Politics at New York University,New York, NY 10012.


Documents

Intergroup Violence and Political Attitudes: Evidence … · Intergroup Violence and Political Attitudes: Evidence from a Dividing Sudan Bernd Beber New York University Philip Roessler