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Narmin Yousef-Butt
Book Project:
My book project, Rebuilding After Conflict: Origins and Legacies of Collaboration, examines how wartime affiliations shape the trajectory of post-conflict recovery. The first part of the book develops a grounded theory of collaboration as a fluid and politically contested category, asking who is considered a collaborator, who decides, and how those judgments vary across actors and settings. Drawing on more than 200 interviews with civilians and elites in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as a large-scale conjoint experiment in Iraq, I show that label of collaboration is not always based on verified evidence but instead rely on socially constructed cues such as ethnicity, kinship, or rumor, with profound consequences for reintegration. The second part of the book investigates how these judgments shape key domains of postwar governance—electoral preferences, public goods distribution, and elite cooperation—using survey experiments, observational data, interviews, and a lab-in-the-field experiment. I find that the label of “collaborator” generates persistent patterns of exclusion: voters penalize candidates with collaboration histories, politicians avoid allocating resources to neighborhoods associated with collaborators, and elites hesitate to cooperate with peers carrying this stigma. Together, these findings demonstrate that the moral and political judgments surrounding collaboration are central to understanding why some individuals and communities remain marginalized long after the violence has ended, and why efforts at post-conflict rebuilding often reproduce wartime cleavages instead of overcoming them.
Working Papers
Are citizens willing to vote for alleged collaborators in multiethnic, post-conflict states? And to what extent do shared-identity concerns feature in their decision-making process? I examine these dynamics using a conjoint survey experiment conducted in Kabul, Afghanistan, prior to the collapse of Afghan democracy. I find that alleged collaboration reduces the reported willingness to vote, while shared ethnic identity increases support for candidates in post-conflict elections, and the interaction between the two reveals a moderating effect of shared coethnic identity on the negative effects of collaboration. Yet, these moderating effects run in opposing directions for 'victimized' versus 'perpetrator' group members. For 'victimized' group members, a mechanism of in-group favoritism seems to be at work such that co-ethnic enemy collaboration is perceived as coerced; for 'perpetrator' group members, a mechanism of in-group policing appears to be at play where co-ethnics are seen as having engaged voluntarily and, therefore, to deserve punishment for this engagement.
Will post-conflict communities include individuals who collaborated with the losing side of a civil conflict in rebuilding efforts? Although stability requires reintegration, governments often exclude these communities. We argue that in decentralized states with weak party institutions and limited oversight, local politicians face incentives that diverge from those of national leaders. While central authorities prioritize inclusive reconstruction to satisfy international and domestic audiences, local politicians answer to narrower constituencies and often view collaborators as “toxic assets.” As a result, they avoid investing in these neighborhoods because of the electoral costs associated with them. We test this argument in post-Daesh Iraq using observational data from 741 neighborhoods, a conjoint experiment with 398 local politicians, and qualitative interviews with 50 local politicians. We find evidence that local politicians exclude high-collaborator neighborhoods due to electoral costs associated with these areas. These dynamics show how decentralization with weak oversight can lead to the exclusion of communities essential for long-term peace-building.
“Political Cooperation in Post-Conflict Societies: The Impact of Collaboration Histories Among Political Elites” - (with R. Aldulaimi). Under Review.
How does a politician's willingness to cooperate change when their peer has a history of collaboration with the losing side in a conflict? What mechanisms drive this reluctance? Which politicians are most sensitive to collaboration history, and under what conditions might this stigma be mitigated? We address these questions using a multimethod research design in Iraq, combining a lab-in-the-field experiment and qualitative interviews, both conducted with elected politicians. We find that collaboration history reduces cooperation, primarily due to concerns about trust and fears of future disloyalty. However, this exclusion is not uniform. Politicians who rely on the votes of former collaborators or have personal or social ties to them are more likely to cooperate, while those who experienced wartime harm are especially punitive. Importantly, we show that disclosing prior cooperative behavior partially offsets the stigma of collaboration. These findings highlight both the challenges and possibilities for fostering political reintegration in post-conflict societies.
Fieldwork in Progress
Research on Collaborators, Stigma, and the Politics of Reintegration (Syria and Libya):
“The Power of Institutions: Trust, Legitimacy, and the Reintegration of Former Collaborators”. Fieldwork Ongoing.
“Elite Signaling and Collaborator Reintegration in Libya and Syria”. Fieldwork Ongoing.
Research on Exclusion (Syria and Iraq):
"Neighborhood Inequality and Electoral Behavior: How Exclusion Shapes Local Election in Iraq." (with M. Abuzaid). Fieldwork Ongoing.
"Economic Exclusion and the Dynamics of Violence." (with M. Abuzaid). Fieldwork Ongoing.
"From Margins to Movement: The Political Economy of Exclusion and its Influence on Nieghborhood Mobilization in Iraq." (with M. Abuzaid). Fieldwork Ongoing.
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