This article was downloaded by: [University of Louisville]On: 21 December 2014, At: 00:48Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House,37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK

Annals of the Association of American GeographersPublication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/raag20

Reconciliation in Conflict-Affected Societies: MultilevelModeling of Individual and Contextual Factors in theNorth Caucasus of RussiaKristin M. Bakke a , John O'Loughlin b & Michael D. Ward ca Department of Political Science , University College London ,b Institute of Behavioral Science , University of Colorado ,c Department of Political Science , Duke University ,Published online: 10 Nov 2009.

To cite this article: Kristin M. Bakke , John O'Loughlin & Michael D. Ward (2009) Reconciliation in Conflict-Affected Societies:Multilevel Modeling of Individual and Contextual Factors in the North Caucasus of Russia, Annals of the Association ofAmerican Geographers, 99:5, 1012-1021, DOI: 10.1080/00045600903260622

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00045600903260622

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the “Content”) containedin the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make norepresentations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of theContent. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, andare not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon andshould be independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable forany losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoeveror howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use ofthe Content.

This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematicreproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in anyform to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

Reconciliation in Conflict-Affected Societies:Multilevel Modeling of Individual and Contextual

Factors in the North Caucasus of RussiaKristin M. Bakke,∗ John O’Loughlin,† and Michael D. Ward‡

∗Department of Political Science, University College London†Institute of Behavioral Science, University of Colorado

‡Department of Political Science, Duke University

Over the past two decades, there has been a growing interest in reconciliation in societies emerging from conflict.The North Caucasus region of Russia has experienced multiple and diverse conflicts since the collapse of theSoviet Union, and violence continues, although at a lower level than a decade ago. We examine willingness toforgive members of other ethnic groups for violence that they have perpetuated as an indicator of the potentialfor reconciliation in the region. Using data from a large representative survey conducted in five ethnic republicsof the North Caucasus in December 2005, we analyze responses to the forgiveness question in relation to social–psychological models of reconciliation, and we add a key geographic measure, distance to violent events, to theusual theories. Using the survey data (N = 2,000) and aggregate data for the eighty-two sampling points, we usea multilevel modeling approach to separate out the effects of individual and contextual factors. We find littlesupport for the social identity theory expectations as ethnic hostility is not an important factor, except for inthe case of the Ossetians, a mostly Orthodox minority disproportionately affected by multiple conflicts and theBeslan school killings. Instead, personal experiences of violence and terrorism, the impacts of military actionsagainst communities, differences in general trust of others, and the extent to which the respondent’s life has beenchanged by violence negatively influence the willingness to forgive. Conversely, respondents in ethnic Russiancommunities and those relatively close to violence are more willing to engage in postconflict reconciliation.Key Words: contextual effects, multilevel modeling, North Caucasus, postwar reconciliation, Russia.

Durante las dos ultimas decadas ha surgido creciente interes por la reconciliacion en las sociedades que emergende conflictos. La region del Caucaso Norte en Rusia ha experimentado multiples y diversos conflictos desdeel colapso de la Union Sovietica y la violencia continua allı, aunque con niveles de intensidad menores delos de hace una decada. Examinamos la condicion de buena voluntad de perdonar a miembros de otros gruposetnicos por la violencia que ellos han perpetuado, a tıtulo de indicador del potencial de reconciliacion dela region. Con datos de una encuesta representativa amplia realizada en cinco republicas etnicas de CaucasoNorte, en diciembre de 2005, analizamos las respuestas a preguntas sobre perdon en relacion con modelossocio-psicologicos de reconciliacion, agregando a las teorıas usuales una medida geografica clave, la distanciaa sucesos violentos. Utilizando los datos de la encuesta (N=2.000) y datos agregados para los ochenta y dospuntos de muestra, aplicamos un enfoque de modelaje de nivel multiple, para separar los efectos de factoresindividuales y contextuales. Hallamos poco soporte a las expectattivas sobre la teorıa de identidad social por

Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 99(5) 2009, pp. 1012–1021 C© 2009 by Association of American GeographersInitial submission, September 2008; revised submission, January 2009; final acceptance, February 2009

Published by Taylor & Francis, LLC.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f L

ouis

ville

] at

00:

48 2

1 D

ecem

ber

2014

Multilevel Modeling of Individual and Contextual Factors in the North Caucasus of Russia 1013

cuanto la hostilidad etnica no es un factor importante, con la excepcion del caso de los osetios, una minorıa conpredominio ortodoxo afectada de modo desproporcionado por multiples conflictos, y la masacre de la escuela deBeslan. Por el contrario, las experiencias personales de violencia y terrorismo, los impactos de acciones militarescontra comunidades, las diferencias en el nivel de confianza general en otros, y el grado con que la vida delentrevistado ha sido cambiada por la violencia, influyen negativamente en la voluntad de perdonar. A la inversa,los entrevistados en comunidades etnicas rusas y quienes viven relativamente cerca de la violencia, estan masinclinados a comprometerse en reconciliacion posconflicto. Palabras clave: efectos contextuales, modelaje de nivelmultiple, Caucaso Norte, reconciliacion de posguerra, Rusia.

Restoring peace in postconflict and conflict-affected societies is a complex process. The war-ring parties need to lay down their weapons,

agree on an institutional division of power andresources, and begin the material reconstruction ofproperties and infrastructure damaged during thefighting—with or without the help of the internationalcommunity (e.g., Roeder and Rothchild 2005; Collier2006). Our study focuses on an equally importantelement of postwar reconstruction, conflict reconcili-ation that involves the emotional and cognitive pro-cesses that help former adversaries to live together inpeace. We investigate why some individuals in conflict-affected societies are more inclined to forgive the per-petrators of violence than are others. We do so byexamining individual and district-level indicators likelyto affect reconciliation in the North Caucasus regionof Russia, employing survey, census, and violence data.Since the end of the Cold War, the North Caucasusregion of Russia has been the scene of different typesof violent conflict: interethnic, religiously motivated,and separatist struggles. Based on a large public opin-ion survey carried out in December 2005 and originaldata that pinpoint the locations of violent incidentsin the region between 1999 and 2005, this is the firststudy that systematically examines intergroup forgive-ness in the North Caucasus. Unlike much previousworks of this genre, we specifically examine whetherthere is a “geography” to reconciliation, beyond thatexplained by variations in the characteristics of thepeople in conflict zones. Does it matter in which com-munity a person lives in understanding the ability toforgive? Does the community’s relative level of vio-lence produce a climate of forgiveness or of blame andaccusation?

Conflict in the North Caucasus

Our study region in the North Caucasus is an eth-nically diverse area of the Russian Federation, consist-

ing of six republics (Chechnya, Ingushetia, Dagestan,Kabardino-Balkaria, Karachaevo-Cherkessia, NorthOssetia) and the large Russian-dominated territory ofStavropol’ (see Figure 1). The most destructive conflicthas taken place in Chechnya, where civil war broke outin 1994 when Moscow responded to Chechen separatistdemands with military force. In 1992, North Ossetiawas the scene of a violent interethnic conflict, wheninformal militias representing the Ingush populationconcentrated in the region’s Prigorodnyy rayon clashedwith North Ossetian militias, both sides laying claimto the territory. The violent phase of the conflict, al-though short-lived, resulted in a large outflow of Ingushsettlers from North Ossetia. Although unresolved andstill a very sensitive matter (O’Loughlin, O Tuathail,and Kolossov 2008), this conflict has not resulted inlarge-scale violence since November 1992.

By 1999 the Chechen conflict began to spill overinto the neighboring regions, in particular Dagestan,Ingushetia, and Kabardino-Balkaria, each of which alsofaces its own internal domestic conflict(s). Althoughfighting in Chechnya has diminished since 2002 asthe rebellion has been quashed by Chechnya’s newpro-Moscow president Ramzan Kadyrov, violence isincreasing in other parts of the North Caucasus. Byone estimate, at least seventeen insurgent organiza-tions of varying sizes (50–2,000 members) were activein the Northern Caucasus in 2005 (Lyall 2006). Readilyavailable weapons, unemployment, radical Islamistforces, and religious discrimination are contributingfactors to the violence (Matsuzato and Ibragimov 2005).Overall, the North Caucasus has been characterized byviolence directed at Russian military targets, local po-lice, and government officials rather than at civilians(Lyall 2006; O’Loughlin and Witmer forthcoming), al-though there has been a considerable number of civiliankidnappings, both at the hands of the Russian securityforces and the militias under the control of local lead-ers. Perhaps the most well-known of these attacks wasthe tragic Beslan (North Ossetia) school hostage crisisof September 2004. Estimates of the total killed in the

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f L

ouis

ville

] at

00:

48 2

1 D

ecem

ber

2014

1014 Bakke, O’Loughlin, and Ward

Figure 1. Modal responses to (a) theforgiveness question and (b) stan-dardized residuals from the General-ized Linear Latent and Mixed Models(GLLAMM) model with locational in-set of the North Caucasus region.

various intermeshed North Caucasian conflicts over thepast fifteen years range from 75,000 to 100,000.

Reconciliation After Conflict

Conflict reconciliation is distinct from conflict set-tlement and resolution. Central to reconciliation is theremoval of the negation of “the other” in people’s iden-tities (Kelman 2008). As such, reconciliation goes be-yond conflict settlement, which concerns the interestsat stake in a conflict, and conflict resolution, which

concerns pragmatic changes in the relationship be-tween former adversaries. Reconciliation is about in-ternalizing and integrating the changed relationshipsinto one’s identity. More generally, social psychologistsdefine intergroup reconciliation as “a process that leadsto a stable end to conflict and is predicated on changesin the nature of adversarial relations between the ad-versaries and each of the parties’ conflict-related needs,emotions, and cognitions” (Nadler, Malloy, and Fisher2008, 4). Although reaching and implementing a set-tlement are critical for lasting peace in conflict-affected

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f L

ouis

ville

] at

00:

48 2

1 D

ecem

ber

2014

Multilevel Modeling of Individual and Contextual Factors in the North Caucasus of Russia 1015

societies, such formal steps might not be sufficient inthe absence of empathy, trust, understanding, and for-giveness among the former adversaries. Indeed, truthand reconciliation commissions in South Africa andelsewhere begin by hearing personal testimonies andapplications for amnesty in societies characterized by aviolent past through reconciliation and “truth telling”(e.g., Gibson and Gouws 1999; Ross 2004).

A critical step toward reconciliation is intergroupforgiveness, which is not about forgetting the past butabout trying to come to terms with the past and creat-ing a shared vision of the future by learning new aspectsabout oneself and one’s own group and exploring theworld from other groups’ points of view (Noor, Brown,and Prentice 2008). Forgiveness can help prevent col-lective memories of violent events feeding into a re-curring cycle of violence. Forgiveness is often thoughtabout in terms of interpersonal relationships, but in so-cieties where members of different ethnic groups havefought one another, a growing body of research in socialpsychology suggests that forgiveness is conceptualizedas a group concern (Hewstone et al. 2008). We as-sess intergroup forgiveness based on a question asked ofrespondents in the North Caucasus in December 2005that (indirectly) probed whether they could forgive peo-ple of other nationalities for the violence they havecommitted in the post-Soviet years.

Social Psychology and Intergroup Forgiveness

Several of the empirical findings on intergroup for-giveness are based on studies of Catholic and Protestantcommunities in Northern Ireland. There, researchershave found that identity with one’s own group (in-group identity), trust in members of other ethnicgroups (outgroup trust), and contact with members fromother ethnic communities (the contact hypothesis) arekey determinants for intergroup forgiveness (Hewstoneet al. 2006; Noor, Brown, and Prentice 2008). Thesestudies draw on social identity theory, which views iden-tity as central to both conflict emergence and reconcil-iation. Social identity theory assumes that people haveboth personal and social identities, and social identitycomes from group membership. Because people seek apositive social identity, they compare their own group(the ingroup) with relevant other groups (outgroups).In experiments, people tend behaviorally to favor theirown group, the ingroup, even if they are randomly as-signed to a group with no substantive bonds holding thegroup members together. Indeed, even when people areassigned to groups based on some arbitrary and minimal

criteria, they will favor members of their own group if,for example, they are to allocate rewards to different in-dividuals (the minimal-group paradigm; for overviews,see Brown 2000; Hewstone and Greenland 2000). Theimplications are that conflicts can arise out of inter-group relations where there are no apparent materialconflicts of interest.

Two hypotheses for our study are suggested by socialidentity theory. First, individuals who express strongpride in their ethnic group (ingroup) might be lesslikely to forgive perpetrators of violence from other eth-nic groups (outgroups) than are those who express lesspride in their ingroup. In our analysis, we include a sur-vey question that asks the respondents the following:“To what extent to you feel proud to be a member ofyour national group?” The answers are given on a scaleranging from 1 (very proud) to 5 (not proud at all). Sec-ond, individuals who express low levels of interethnictrust might be less likely to forgive perpetrators of vi-olence from other ethnic groups than those who aremore trusting of outsiders. To consider this hypothesis,we include a survey question that measures individuals’trust in their own ethnic group—and by implication,their trust in other groups. The respondents were askedwhether they agreed with the following statement: “It’spossible to trust only people of my nationality,” usinga scale ranging from 1 (strongly agree) to 5 (stronglydisagree).

Horowitz (1985) explained ethnic conflicts as non-instrumental competition. He pointed out that becauseethnicity cannot easily be changed, intergroup compar-isons between ethnic groups become even more salientthan when groups are randomly assembled. Focusingon the difference between dominant and subordinategroups, Horowitz found that economically poorer groupsare most often the initiators in ethnic conflicts becausethey perceive that they are less developed or inferior tomore advanced groups. As such, it is plausible that indi-viduals who are poorer or who have experienced ethnicdiscrimination are less likely to forgive perpetrators ofviolence from other ethnic groups than are individualswho have not experienced ethnic discrimination. Toaccount for such a possibility, we include a survey ques-tion that asks the respondents the following: “Have youbeen discriminated against because of your ethnicity orreligion?” The answers were given on a scale rangingfrom 1 (yes, often) to 4 (never).

More generally, inclusion, empathy, and respectfor others are factors that both constitute and furtherfoster conflict reconciliation (Kelman 2008). Forour analysis, we include a question that asks the

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f L

ouis

ville

] at

00:

48 2

1 D

ecem

ber

2014

1016 Bakke, O’Loughlin, and Ward

respondents, “Generally speaking, can most people betrusted, or do you need to be careful?” Our expectationis that individuals who are generally trusting of othersare more likely than untrusting individuals to forgiveperpetrators of violence.

Experiences of Violence

We hypothesize that an important determinant offorgiveness is the respondents’ experiences of violencebecause research on postconflict societies often assumesthat violent conflict damages interpersonal trust (e.g.,Posner 2004; Widner 2004). Yet not all individuals liv-ing in conflict-affected societies personally experienceviolence. We would expect, following the research ofHewstone et al. (2006) for Northern Ireland, that some-one who lives in an area that has been the target offrequent attacks is less likely to forgive perpetrators ofviolence than is a person without such experiences. Toassess this hypothesis, we include two individual-levelindicators and one district-level indicator for experi-ences of violence. First, we include a question (witha binary response) that asks whether the respondents’lives have significantly changed due to violence anddanger in the North Caucasus. Our assumption is thatchanges caused by violence are likely to make individ-uals less forgiving. We also include a question that askswhether the respondent’s community was targeted bymilitary operations or police actions in the conflicts inthe North Caucasus (binary response), expecting thatthose living in communities targeted in such actionswould be less forgiving.

In addition to examining the effect of individual—and, thus, subjective—experiences of violence, wealso assessed whether survey respondents residing inviolence-ridden areas were less likely to forgive per-petrators of violence than respondents living in morepeaceful areas. Based on original data (O’Loughlin andWitmer forthcoming), we aggregated violent events foreighty-two sampling points across the North Caucasusregion and thus created an indicator that counts thenumber of violent incidents between 1999 (the start ofthe second Chechen war) and 2005 (the time of thesurvey) within a 50-km radius of each survey respon-dent. Our expectation is that respondents residing inareas characterized by violent incidents are less likelyto forgive perpetrators of violence. We used a thresholdof 50 km because a plot of violence by 25-km distancebands shows a substantial decrease in the occurrence atthis distance.

Socioeconomic Status and Ethnic Composition

As control variables in the model, we include eachindividual’s self-reported material status, based on aquestion that assesses the degree to which he or shecan purchase the things he or she needs and wants.The expectation is that economic hardship might causemore negative assessments of others, which can affectindividuals’ abilities or willingness to forgive perpetra-tors of violence. We also include an indicator for theshare of Russians in the sample districts. There has beena significant redistribution of Russians in the NorthCaucasus since the conflicts began in the early 1990swith big drops in the Russian proportions in the eth-nic republics (especially Chechnya, Dagestan, and In-gushetia) and a growth in Stavropol’ due to flight fromconflicts elsewhere (Belozerov 2005). We therefore ex-pect less forgiveness in communities with a high Russianratio. Finally, we include a predictor of whether therespondent was Ossetian. A small, mostly Orthodoxpopulation in a predominantly Muslim region, Osse-tians have traditionally been allied to Moscow and havefought three recent wars with their Ingush and Geor-gian neighbors over territory. The horrific violence atthe Beslan school occurred just over a year before oursurvey and caused an enormous shock to locals. We ex-pect that the nature of this terror, which killed about330, including more than 180 children, will foster lowlevels of forgiveness among the Ossetians.

Contextual Effects in Postwar Reconciliation

It is now widely acknowledged by geographers that“places matter”; that is, that individual-level predictorsdo not fully account for variation in political and so-cial behavior between communities. Long a debatingpoint between political geographers and political scien-tists (e.g., Agnew 1996; King 1996; O’Loughlin 2000),recent methodological advances have allowed geogra-phers to clarify the relative importance of contextualeffects and to point to the limitations of place-free ap-proaches in the behavioral sciences. Work in electoralgeography especially has indicated the significant influ-ence of community interactions (titled the “friends andneighbors” effect) on voters’ choices (Johnston et al.2004). A growing recognition of the value of multilevelmodeling approaches for separating out the individual(first-level) and community (second-level) effects hasgenerated dozens of studies that indicate modest (5 to15 percent) but important contributions of contextualeffects (Jones and Duncan 1996). Given the variability

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f L

ouis

ville

] at

00:

48 2

1 D

ecem

ber

2014

Multilevel Modeling of Individual and Contextual Factors in the North Caucasus of Russia 1017

in the local geographies of civil wars (Kalyvas 2006),our expectation is that the reconciliation process is alsogeographically variable and related to violence expe-riences. A multilevel approach allows us to measurethe social-psychological effects on the individual, as re-viewed earlier, and the geographic effects of communityexposure to violence.

Data, Methods, and Results

We assess intergroup forgiveness based on theresponses of 2,000 individuals in four North Caucasusrepublics (North Ossetia, Dagestan, Kabardino-Balkaria, and Karachaevo-Cherkessia) and oneterritory (Stavropol’) to the question, “There arepeople who are convinced that they could neverforgive people of other nationalities for the violencethey have committed in the last fifteen years. Areyou among those people?” The sensitive nature of thisquestion required an indirect wording, a tactic that wasconfirmed in the pilot testing of the survey instrument.Due to missing data, seventy-eight responses weredropped from the analysis. Because of the dangersinvolved in doorstep interviewing in the most violentrepublics, Ingushetia and Chechnya had to be excludedfrom the analysis. The survey was distributed in propor-tion to population and ethnicity in the sample regions,and it is the most comprehensive survey carried out inthe region to date. A geographically stratified samplingstrategy captured the locational variation withinthe republics: urban–rural, mixed and homogenouscommunities, mountains–piedmont–plains location,and material wellbeing. There are eighty-two samplepoints, ranging from large cities (e.g., Stavropol’,Mineralnyy Vody, Makhachkala, Vladikavkaz) toisolated rural settlements (see Figure 1). Details on thesurvey are available in Bakke et al. (2009).

The dependent variable, forgiveness, is an ordered,categorical variable, and the 1,922 responses are or-dered from “definitely no” (n = 312), “mostly disagree”(n = 527), “maybe” (n = 536), “mostly agree” (n =328), to “definitely yes” (n = 219). The map of thedistribution of modal responses in Figure 1a shows bothdramatic variation across the region and sizable dif-ferences within each republic. “Strongly agree” and“mostly agree” (with the proposition) indicate a reluc-tance to forgive others for the violence they committed.These views characterize samples in or near places thatexperienced significant hostage-taking and consequent

loss of life (Budyennovsk-Priobrazenskoye in 1995 andBeslan in 2004) or large-scale attacks and massive lossof life (Sunzha in 1992, Yessentuki-Mineralnyy Vodyin 2003, and Nal’chik-Ausiger in 2005). Communi-ties furthest from the zones of greatest violence, innorthern Stavropol’, Karachaevo-Cherkessia, and mostof Dagestan, have the highest levels of propensity toforgive.

The model’s independent predictors are personal at-tributes and self-reported attitudes of respondents aswell as characteristics of each of the eighty-two rayoni(counties) in which the sampling points are located.Key contextual variables are the Russian proportion ofthe population in each rayon (from the 2002 Russiancensus) and the number of violent events that haveoccurred within 50 km of the sampling point. Thiscombination of individual and district-level data re-sults in a statistical model that is somewhat unusual. Weuse a multilevel, ordered probit specification to capturethe individual and aggregate variable elements of ourmodel. Multilevel models are now common in the so-cial sciences, and so are ordered probit specifications;however, only a few examples of multilevel, orderedprobits have been developed, mostly in the context offitting conditional models across diverse societies (Kingand Wand 2007).

To represent the observed categorical variable, wedefine a latent response variable (Yi,d ) for the ith in-dividual in the dth district such that the range of thelatent variable is divided into k + 1 categories that cor-respond to the observed data by estimated parameters.The latent model for forgiveness is

yi,d =

⎧⎪⎪⎪⎪⎨⎪⎪⎪⎪⎩

1 (definitely no) ⇔ −∞ < y∗i,d < τ1

2 (mostly disagree) ⇔ τ1 < y∗i,d < τ2

3 (maybe) ⇔ τ2 < y∗i,d < τ3

4 (mostly agree) ⇔ τ3 < y∗i,d < τ4

5 (definitely yes) ⇔ τ4 < y∗i,d < ∞

This latent model has no analytical solution andis tackled by a normal quadrature approach (Rabe-Hesketh and Skrondal 2008), available via the Gen-eralized Linear Latent and Mixed Models package inSTATA, used to produce the estimates.

We specify our ordered probit model of forgivenessas significantly related to Ossetian ethnic membership,level of targeting of the community by the Russian mil-itary, level of ethnic pride, the scale of changes in therespondent’s life due to violence, the respondent’s levelof general trust, and two aggregate measures, share of

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f L

ouis

ville

] at

00:

48 2

1 D

ecem

ber

2014

1018 Bakke, O’Loughlin, and Ward

Table 1. Multilevel ordered probit model estimates offorgiveness—GLLAMM estimates for the North Caucasus

sample

Standard Z-scorePredictor Coefficient error (Probability)

Ossetian 0.3235 0.121 2.69 (0.007)Military target 0.3651 0.093 3.92 (0.000)Pride in ethnic group 0.0708 0.061 1.18 (0.239)Changed life 0.2848 0.054 5.31 (0.000)General trust 0.1676 0.067 2.51 (0.012)Russian share of

population−0.0004 0.001 −2.86 (0.004)

Violence within 50kilometers

−0.0002 0.0001 −3.56 (0.000)

τ1 −1.147 0.108 −10.64 (0.000)τ2 −.225 0.107 −2.11 (0.035)τ3 0.623 0.106 5.87 (0.000)τ4 1.425 0.109 13.08 (0.000)

Notes: Number of respondents (Level 1 units) = 1,922. Number of Level2 units (survey points) = 82. Log likelihood = –2785.83. GLLAMM =Generalized Linear Latent and Mixed Models.

Russians in local population and incidents of violencewithin 50 km of the respondent’s home. We checkedother possible sociodemographic controls (gender, oc-cupation, age, etc.) but do not include them becausethey are insignificant. More important, five factors thatwe expected to be related to forgiveness from the socialpsychology of reconciliation literature cited earlier—perception of discrimination, material wealth status,pride in the respondent’s own ethnic group, nature ofintergroup contacts, and trust in other ethnicities—arenot statistically significant when considered in the sameordered probit regression as the significant relationshipsreported in Table 1; therefore, they are dropped fromthe model. We retain the pride measure (a binary vari-able separating those who express strong pride or pridein their ethnic group) because of its central importancein the social-psychological theories of reconciliation.

In the null multilevel model (with no predictors),the Level 1 (respondents) variance accounts for 71.3percent and the Level 2 (sample points) for 28.7 per-cent of the total variance; however, after the orderedprobit model is fitted, the map of the standardized resid-uals for the eighty-two survey points (Figure 1b) showsno evident spatial or contextual patterning, nor anycorrelation with the original dependent variable val-ues. Only in Dagestan is there any evident clustering ofresiduals but the overall range is small. The sample level

variances for the survey points in the model, however,are significant at 0.470 with a standard error of 0.076.

In examining the relationships, as expected, Osse-tians are less likely to forgive than are other ethnicgroups, an outcome of the involvement of this commu-nity in an unresolved territorial conflict with the Ingushand the attack on the Beslan school a year before thesurvey. People perceiving that they live in communitiesthat have experienced disproportionate attacks fromthe Russian military and allied paramilitary forces arealso less willing to forgive perpetrators of violence. Al-though the ethnic pride predictor shows a coefficient inthe expected (positive) direction, the relationship is notsignificant. Respondents who feel that their lives havebeen significantly changed by violence in the region arealso less likely to forgive than those who have not ex-perienced such violence-induced life changes. Personswho are more cautious (picking the prompt “you cannotbe too careful”) are less likely to forgive than are respon-dents with a higher level of general trust (“most peoplecan be trusted”). Both of our aggregate indicators arenegatively related to the dependent variable, indicatinga higher level of forgiveness. The value for the Russianshare of the population is undoubtedly related to thegeographic distribution of this ethnicity to the northand west of the North Caucasus and thus farther fromthe locales of highest violence. The only unexpectedresult was for the measure of exposure to violence; peo-ple living in communities with more violent incidenceswithin 50 km are more likely to forgive than those inmore peaceful locales.

To illustrate the results graphically in Figure 2, wepresent the predicted value of the latent representa-tion of forgiveness (minus any random effects) in twodifferent scenarios. The blue line shows the density ofpredictions for all 1,922 respondents for the model. Thebrown line portrays a similar calculation, except that weremoved a key contextual variable, the share of the Rus-sian population in the model. The comparison of thesetwo distributions illustrates clearly that inclusion of thisvariable changes the model predictions, increasing sub-stantially the number of predictions of higher levelsof forgiveness. Figure 2 shows that ignoring the multi-level context yields results that are far too optimisticabout forgiveness while underestimating the number ofrespondents who self-report lower levels of forgiveness.

Our results do not strongly support the theoreti-cal propositions of the social-psychological theories ofreconciliation after extended violence, but they are inline with other studies of interethnic attitudes in former

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f L

ouis

ville

] at

00:

48 2

1 D

ecem

ber

2014

Multilevel Modeling of Individual and Contextual Factors in the North Caucasus of Russia 1019

Figure 2. Effect of the removal of contextual variable (Russianpercentage) from the model of forgiveness.

Communist states. Whitt and Wilson (2007), in an ex-perimental game in Bosnia with different ethnicities,find that although there is a preference for the ingroup,the bias against the outgroups (other ethnicities) is lessthan expected; they conclude that this higher norm offairness bodes well for reconciliation. For the formerSoviet Union, Hale (2008) showed that the cognitiveprocess of using ethnicity as an “uncertainty-reducing”process is associated with peaceful and cooperative eth-nic relations in some regions but activated in move-ments for secession and conflict in others. With theexception of the Ossetians, whose experiences of vio-lence are unique in the region, we did not find thatethnic group membership, or other sociodemographiccategories, helped us understand people’s willingness toforgive others for violence. Instead, like the study oflong-term trauma among Bosnians exposed to violenceby Ringdal, Ringdal, and Simkus (2008), we find thatthose more directly affected by violence in their dailylives—those who consider themselves targeted and whofeel forced to adapt to changed circumstances due toviolence—experienced the most significant long-termeffects. In our case, those with personal experiencesof violence have a lower propensity to forgive thosewho have perpetrated it. In the most extreme exam-ple of war trauma’s effects, a study of thirty-four sui-cide terrorists in Chechnya (based on interviews withthe terrorists’ family members, friends, and hostages),Akhmedova and Speckhard (2006) found that the ter-

rorists’ own experiences of years of violence led to per-sonal trauma and a wish to avenge the deaths of relativesor friends.

Conclusions

The study of intergroup reconciliation and forgive-ness is a relatively new research agenda. Our aim inthis study is not to develop a theory of intergroup for-giveness. Rather, building on the existing literature, ourstudy empirically examines intergroup forgiveness in asociety that has been the scene of several intergroupconflicts. The current situation in the North Cauca-sus is not yet a postwar one where truth and reconcil-iation through national or international commissionscan be promoted. Instead, multiple conflicts drag onin many localities, with occasional outbursts of dra-matic violence, and their geographies shift from yearto year. Although the fighting in Chechnya, betweenfederal forces and their local allies on one side and sep-aratist rebels on the other, has weakened in the pastfew years, low-level violence continues to diffuse tomore communities outside Chechnya. The impact ofthis spread on communities new to the conflicts willresult in more forced adjustments by people previously(barely) unaffected. This diffusion is also expected topostpone the possibility of reconciliation in the region.

Our study emphasized the importance of the level ofpersonal exposure to violence and its effects on one’sdaily activities. Moreover, the usual sociodemographiccategories are not very helpful in understanding thepropensity toward forgiveness, which undermines anyeasy categorization of certain groups (ethnic, age,gender, socioeconomic status) as more willing andable to engage in reconciliation. Because violence incivil wars is both localized and temporally shifting,our modeling highlights the geography of willingnessto forgive across communities, after accounting for itsvariation due to the sociodemographic composition ofresidents.

Unlike postwar developments in countries likeNorthern Ireland, Liberia, South Africa, Rwanda,and Guatemala, reconciliation in the North Caucasusof Russia is a work in progress. The multiple andshifting lines of conflict there, sometimes involvinglocal communities but usually involving some com-bination of state authorities and religious, ethnic, orregional opponents, makes any assumptions about thepermanence of a downturn in violence subject to rapidreversal.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f L

ouis

ville

] at

00:

48 2

1 D

ecem

ber

2014

1020 Bakke, O’Loughlin, and Ward

Acknowledgments

We are grateful to Alexei Grazhdankin of the Lev-ada Center in Moscow for organizing and successfullycarrying out the contract for the large and complex sur-veys in the North Caucasus; to Vladimir Kolossov of theRussian Academy of Sciences for his key insights andfieldwork leadership, his contribution to the design andwording of the questionnaire, and his continuing friend-ship and collegiality; to Gerard Toal of Virginia TechUniversity for his contribution to the survey instrumentdesign and fieldwork comradeship in multiple trips tothe Caucasus; to Frank Witmer and Nancy Thorward-son for (carto)graphical assistance; and to the Annalsreviewers and editor, Audrey Kobayashi, for commentsthat improved the article. This research was supportedby the National Science Foundation (Grant 0433927),via its Cross Directorate Initiative in Human and SocialDynamics.

References

Agnew, J. 1996. Mapping politics: How context counts inelectoral geography. Political Geography 15 (2): 129–46.

Akhmedova, K., and A. Speckhard. 2006. A multi-causalanalysis of the genesis of suicide terrorism: The Chechencase. In Tangled roots: Social and psychological factors in thegenesis of terrorism, ed. J. I. Victoroff, 324–55. Amster-dam: IOS Press.

Bakke, K. M., X. Cao, J. O’Loughlin, and M. D. Ward. 2009.Social distance in Bosnia-Herzegovina and the NorthCaucasus region of Russia: Inter- and intra-ethnic at-titudes and identities. Nations and Nationalism 15 (1):229–55.

Belozerov, V. S. 2005. Etnicheskaya karta Serverogo Kavkaza[Ethnic map of the North Caucasus]. Moscow: OGI.

Brown, R. 2000. Social identity theory: Past achievements,current problems and future challenges. European Journalof Social Psychology 30 (6): 745–78.

Collier, P. 2006. Post-conflict economic recovery. Depart-ment of Economics, Oxford University. http://users.ox.ac.uk/∼econpco/research/pdfs/IPA-PostConflictEcono-mic Recovery.pdf (last accessed 20 September 2009).

Gibson, J. L., and A. Gouws. 1999. Truth and reconciliationin South Africa: Attributions of blame and the struggleover apartheid. American Political Science Review 93 (3):501–17.

Hale, H. E. 2008. The foundations of ethnic politics: Separatismof states and nations in Eurasia and the world. New York:Cambridge University Press.

Hewstone, M., E. Cairns, A. Voci, J. Hamberger, and U.Niens. 2006. Intergroup contact, forgiveness, and expe-rience of the “Troubles” in Northern Ireland. Journal ofSocial Issues 62 (1): 99–120.

Hewstone, M., and K. Greenland. 2000. Inter-group conflict.International Journal of Psychology 35 (2): 136–44.

Hewstone, M., J. B. Kenworthy, E. Cairns, N. Tausch, J.Hughes, T. Tam, A. Voci, U. von Hecker, and C. Pinder.

2008. Stepping stones in Northern Ireland: Intergroupcontact, forgiveness, and trust. In The social psychologyof intergroup reconciliation: From violent conflict to peacefulcoexistence, ed. A. Nadler, T. E. Malloy, and J. D. Fisher,199–226. New York: Oxford University Press.

Horowitz, D. L. 1985. Ethnic groups in conflict. Berkeley: Uni-versity of California Press.

Johnston, R., K. Jones, R. Sarker, C. Propper, S. Burgess,and A. Bolster. 2004. Party support and the neighbour-hood effect: Spatial polarisation of the British electorate,1991–2001. Political Geography 23 (4): 367–402.

Jones, K., and C. Duncan. 1996. People and places: The mul-tilevel model as a general framework of the quantitativeanalysis of geographical data. In Spatial analysis: Mod-elling in a GIS environment, ed. P. Longley and M Batty,79–104. New York: Wiley.

Kalyvas, S. N. 2006. The logic of civil war violence. New York:Cambridge University Press.

Kelman, H. C. 2008. Reconciliation from a social-psychological perspective. In The social psychology ofintergroup reconciliation: From violent conflict to peacefulcoexistence, ed. A. Nadler, T. E. Malloy, and J. D. Fisher,15–32. New York: Oxford University Press.

King, G. 1996. Why context should not count. Political Ge-ography 15 (2): 159–64.

King, G., and J. Wand. 2007. Comparing in-comparable sur-vey responses: Evaluating and selecting anchoring vi-gnettes. Political Analysis 15 (1): 46–66.

Lyall, J. M. K. 2006. Landscapes of violence: A comparativestudy of insurgency in the Northern Caucasus. Paperpresented at the annual meeting of the Midwest PoliticalScience Association, Chicago.

Matsuzato, K., and M.-R. Ibragimov. 2005. Islamic politics atthe subregional level in Dagestan: Tariqa brotherhoods,ethnicities, localism, and the Spiritual Board. Europe-Asia Studies 57 (5): 753–79.

Nadler, A., T. E. Malloy, and J. D. Fisher. 2008. Intergroupreconciliation: Dimensions and themes. In The socialpsychology of intergroup reconciliation: From violent con-flict to peaceful coexistence, ed. A. Nadler, T. E. Malloy,and J. D. Fisher, 3–14. New York: Oxford UniversityPress.

Noor, M., R. Brown, and G. Prentice. 2008. Prospects for in-tergroup reconciliation: Social-psychological predictorsof intergroup forgiveness and reparation in Northern Ire-land and Chile. In The social psychology of intergroup rec-onciliation: From violent conflict to peaceful coexistence, ed.A. Nadler, T. E. Malloy, and J. D. Fisher, 97–114. NewYork: Oxford University Press.

O’Loughlin J. 2000. Geography as space and geography asplace: The divide between political science and politicalgeography continues. Geopolitics 5 (1): 126–37.

O’Loughlin, J., G. O Tuathail, and V. Kolossov. 2008. Thelocalized geopolitics of displacement and return in theEastern Prigorodnyy Rayon of North Ossetia. EurasianGeography and Economics 48 (6): 635–69.

O’Loughlin, J., and F. Witmer. Forthcoming. The geographyof violence in the North Caucasus, 1999–2007. Annalsof the Association of American Geographers.

Posner, D. N. 2004. Civil society and the reconstruction offailed states. In When states fail: Causes and consequences,ed. R. I. Rotberg, 237–55. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Uni-versity Press.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f L

ouis

ville

] at

00:

48 2

1 D

ecem

ber

2014

Multilevel Modeling of Individual and Contextual Factors in the North Caucasus of Russia 1021

Rabe-Hesketh, S., and A. Skrondal. 2008. Multilevel and lon-gitudinal modeling using Stata. 2nd ed. College Station,TX: Stata Press.

Ringdal, G. I., K. Ringdal, and A. Simkus. 2008. War experi-ences and war-related distress in Bosnia and Herzegovinaeight years after war. Croatian Medical Journal 49 (1): 75–86.

Roeder, P. G., and D. Rothchild. 2005. Sustainable peace:Power and democracy after civil wars. Ithaca, NY: CornellUniversity Press.

Ross, A. 2004. Truth and consequences in Guatemala. Geo-journal 60 (1): 73–79.

Whitt, S., and R. K. Wilson. 2007. The dictatorgame: Fairness and ethnicity in postwar Bosnia.American Journal of Political Science 51 (3): 655–68.

Widner, J. 2004. Building effective trust in the aftermathof severe conflict. In When states fail: Causes and conse-quences, ed. R. I. Rotberg, 222–36. Princeton, NJ: Prince-ton University Press.

Correspondence: Department of Political Science, School of Public Policy, University College London, 29/30 Tavistock Square London,WC1H 9QU, UK, e-mail: kmbakke@ucl.acl.uk (Bakke); Institute of Behavioral Science, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80309–0487,e-mail: johno@colorado.edu (O’Loughlin); Department of Political Science, Duke University, Box 90204, Durham, NC 27708, e-mail:michael.d.ward@duke.edu (Ward).

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Uni

vers

ity o

f L

ouis

ville

] at

00:

48 2

1 D

ecem

ber

2014