The Political Futility of Counterinsurgency

What are the long-term political consequences of counterinsurgent violence? An emerging literature analyzes the socio-political consequences of civil war. Yet, while the bulk of this research focuses on individual-level effects, we still have little knowledge about how these results aggregate up to collective outcomes. This study analyzes the electoral consequences of the genocidal counterinsurgency in Guatemala’s three-decades long civil war (1966-96). Previous studies claimed that the violence has drawn the affected indigenous communities away from leftist parties into the fold of neo-authoritarian clientelism.