Violence, voting & peace: Explaining public support for the peace referendum in Colombia

Electoral Studies 61 (2019) 102067

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Violence, voting & peace: Explaining public support for the peace referendum in Colombia Brantona, Demeritta, Amalia Pulidob, Meernika, a b

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University of North Texas, USA Political Studies Division, Center for Research and Teaching in Economics (CIDE), Mexico City, Mexico

A B S T R A C T

How does political violence affect popular support for peace? We answer this question by examining Colombia, where in 2016 the people narrowly and unexpectedly voted against a peace agreement designed to end a half century of civil war. Building on research on the impact of political violence on elections as well as research on referendum/initiative voting in the United States, we argue that local experiences with violence and the political context will lead to heightened support for peace. We test these expectations using spatial modeling and a municipal-level data on voting in the 2016 Colombian peace referendum, and find that municipal-level support for the referendum increases with greater exposure to violence and increasing support for President Santos. These results are spatially distributed, so that exposure to violence in one municipality is associated with greater support for the peace referendum in that municipality and also in surrounding areas. Our findings have implications not only for Colombia, but for all post-war votes and other contexts in which referenda and elections have major and/or unexpected results.

1. Introduction In August of 2016 the Colombian government reached a peace agreement with the FARC rebel movement (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia), thus ending one of the longest running civil wars in South America. The peace deal sparked great optimism among large parts of the Colombian population that daily lived the violence and atrocities of the war, and especially among the international community as President Juan Manuel Santos was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize shortly after the agreement was inked. Nonetheless, the agreement also needed the support of the Colombian people as recorded in a referendum held on October 2, 2016. Against almost all expectations, 50.2% of voters rejected the agreement and President Santos was forced to return to the bargaining table with the FARC in Havana, Cuba. The outcome of the peace referendum shocked many observers who wondered whether the Colombian government and the increasingly unpopular President Santos would be able to implement the peace agreement. Indeed, why would the Colombian people who lived with this conflict for over 50 years and dealt with an especially violent phase of fighting in the last 20 years reject the product of four years of negotiations? The outcome of the peace referendum is not just a conundrum in the context of Colombian politics, this election outcome can help shed light more generally about the preferences of voters regarding peace and peace agreements set against the backdrop of violence, human rights abuses and fear—fear of more violence to come and fear that those who committed the most heinous of atrocities might escape

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justice (Flores and Nooruddin, 2012; Hoglund, 2009; Kydd and Walter, 2002; Stedman, 1997). Research on elections and violence generally examines either the implications of elections in the aftermath of war and political repression, especially regarding civil war recurrence (Collier and Vicente, 2012; Rapaport and Weinberg, 2000; Joshi et al., 2017); or the impact of violence on public opinion (Berrebi and Klor, 2008; Davalos et al., 2018; Ley, 2017). Another strand of research examines the preferences of publics regarding peace more generally (Birnir and Gohdes, 2018; Gallego, 2018; Liendo and Braithwaite, 2018; Weintraub et al., 2015). Our research stands at the crossroads of these streams of scholarship to analyze how past political violence influences voting on the future prospects of curtailing if not ending such violence. Does past violence inspire support for peace as individuals conclude they must accept, however, reluctantly, the political compromises necessary to bring a negotiated end to a civil war? Are individuals willing to extend an olive branch and tolerate a peace that does not provide the full measure of retribution they may desire for their adversaries? Or are individuals more motivated to vote against such agreements because past violence has engendered antipathy toward compromise, suspicion of the motives of those negotiating and a desire for a definitive conclusion to the war that culminates in military victory instead? Using data on voting in the 2016 Colombian peace referendum, we address these important questions regarding elections and violence. Colombia represents an important test case for answering such questions as the referendum voting engages a number of critical factors that

Corresponding author. E-mail address: [email protected] (Meernik).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.electstud.2019.102067 Received 10 October 2018; Received in revised form 30 July 2019; Accepted 7 August 2019 0261-3794/ © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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victims. And with billions of dollars in military and foreign aid from the United States in the Plan Colombia program, President Uribe succeeded in severely weakening the FARC and helped drive them to the negotiating table. The peace process begun under President Santos then played out over several years in Havana, Cuba (2012–2016) where long and complex negotiations resulted in a final agreement in the summer of 2016. The peace process and the peace agreement became strongly identified with President Santo as its principal backer in Colombia. The 2016 peace agreement between the Colombian government and the FARC rebels reflects the scale and complexity of the conflict itself. The peace agreement is one of the longest and most codified peace agreements1 ever engineered (Quinn and Madhav, 2019). The final agreement was reached in August 2016 and was followed by a public signing ceremony on September 26, 2016. Shortly thereafter on October 2nd, the plebiscite on the peace agreement was rejected by a narrow margin of Colombian voters. There are six principal components to the Colombian peace agreement pertaining to: comprehensive rural reform; political participation; end of the conflict measures, including disarmament, demobilization and reintegration of rebels; goals and plans regarding the eradication of coca production by various means, narco-trafficking and other measures designed to address the role of coca and cocaine in fueling the violence; justice for the victims of the conflict including the various institutions established to seek truth, provide a measure of retribution against those who committed serious crimes and reparations; and finally, steps pertaining to the implementation and verification of the agreement and the referendum. While research has shown that such extensively detailed peace agreements are typically associated with longer lasting peace duration (Hartzell and Hoddie, 2003, 2007), the sheer number of issues and goals that must be addressed also engage numerous, diverse and often conflicting interests. One major theme running throughout the peace agreement is the need to address the security, economic and social problems found in those long-neglected areas of Colombia in which much of the violence took place. The absence of a vigorous government presence in these areas, while often beneficial to rebel movements that sought to seize control, as well as powerful landed interests and their allies, the paramilitaries, that sought to exploit these areas for their own benefit, points to one major, potential flashpoint in Colombian society. The conflict victims in these areas are most in need of government provision of security and social services, but the dominant powers in these areas, whether ELN or other rebels or paramilities or narco-traffickers, have a vested interest in keeping the government out in order to pursue their own interests. As well, those involved in drug trafficking might also be expected to oppose any efforts at coca crop eradication or crop substitution programs, which feature prominently in the peace agreement. Victims may be ready for peace, but those who have wrought violence may not be committed to laying down the arms that have for so long sustained their dominance in these hinterland regions of Colombia. One of the most visible and contentious issues that complicated approval of the peace plebiscite concerns what consequences are to befall those who committed human rights violations and other abuses. The FARC and supporters of the peace process approved of the more limited type of accountability envisioned in the peace agreement where FARC guerillas who confessed to their crimes would be treated with a fair degree of leniency regarding the length of their incarceration (up to 8 years for those who confessed their crimes) and the type of detention (the term “deprivation of liberty” was used rather than “prison”). On the other hand, opponents of the peace process pointed to such lenient treatment as evidence that the FARC would pay little if any price for the massacres, kidnappings and other crimes they committed. Indeed, the

can provide new insights into political preferences regarding peace in the aftermath of war. In addition to the aforementioned need for scholars to better develop and test theories regarding the impact of violence on voting, there is also the critical issue of the location of the violence. The violence from the civil war was not evenly distributed across Colombia, but was concentrated in certain regions of the country, especially those where there had long been a history of governmental absence. The lack of government provided security and social services in these areas made possible the emergence of armed actors, such as the FARC, who exploited governance failures and convinced or coerced the population into accepting their presence. In turn, the FARC presence resulted in the rise of paramilitary groups that sought to defend the interests of traditional landowners and others suspicious of the leftist FARC. Thus, we also assess the extent to which a government presence and provision of services helps explain support for the peace agreement. Finally, we inquire about the role of partisan and electoral politics in the rejection of the peace referendum. More generally, the Colombian case provides a unique perspective into the impact of conflict on political preferences in a longstanding democratic regime. There have been few other cases where a fully functioning democracy not only reached a peace agreement with a rebel movement, it also changed presidents democratically as the peace agreement was being implemented. These are the questions we address and the reasons why we believe Colombia presents such a fascinating and critical test case regarding our understanding of voting, violence and politics. We begin by reviewing the relevant research as we develop our theoretical expectations regarding voting on the peace referendum. We link our expectations regarding the Colombian vote to research on elections and violence, transitional justice and public preferences regarding peace. As well, we develop our expectations regarding the impact of partisan politics and support for President Santos in the 1100 + Colombian municipalities. We then introduce our data set on voting in these municipalities across Colombia. Next, we develop our principal multivariate model of voting for peace across the municipalities as well as a more complex spatial model of voting. A central contention is that referendum voting, and in particular the effects of war and political violence, is spatially determined. As well, we argue and find that greater levels of political violence and lack of government presence are associated with greater levels of support for the peace agreement across Colombian municipalities. 2. Background The outcome of the referendum on the Colombian peace agreement with the FARC came as a shock to most observers who expected the peace agreement would be approved by a war-weary public. Indeed, violence had been endemic in Colombian society for such a long period of time, and peace had been attempted so many times before not only with the FARC but with other rebel groups and drug traffickers, it seemed few persons had escaped the ravages of these conflicts. The war with the FARC guerillas, as well as the ELN rebel movement date back to the early 1960's, and has ebbed and flowed over the years, especially as the guerilla armies became more involved in drug production and transportation in the 1990's. This led to both a dramatic increase in resources, which in turned fueled the expansion of the FARC, as well as violence and shifting alliances among narco-traffickers, paramilitary groups and government forces. After several failed attempts at peace, most notably the highly visible but ultimately ill-fated attempt from 1998 to 2002 by President Pastrana that led to greater distrust of the FARC, more aggressive military measures were adopted. President Alvaro Uribe, who was elected in 2002 (and again in 2006) captured the presidency in large measure by promising to finally take the fight to the FARC, greatly expanded the use of the Colombian military, and, at times, in alliance with paramilitary groups won a series of victories against the FARC and secured the release of many of the most prominent FARC kidnapping

1 The Kroc Institute at Notre Dame University, Indiana is recognized in the agreement as responsible for the collection and analysis of data on the implementation of the peace agreement.

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target government installations in the capital city (e.g., IRA bomb attacks in London during the 1980s and early 1990s), they may seek to disrupt vital economic industries (e.g., oil pipelines and refineries in Nigeria and Syria), and/or they may target vulnerable populations (e.g., school children in Pakistan and Nigeria). Violence in some areas may be systematic and ongoing, while in other areas it may be more random and infrequent. Each may produce its own psychological impacts on those who experience it; those who witness it and those who only read about it. The agents of violence and the types of violence deployed may also vary in conflict zones (Arjona 2016a,b; Daly, 2016; Wood, 2008). The differential impacts of war suggest that perceptions and evaluations by the public of war-waging and peacemaking strategies may reflect these spatial variations (Theidon, 2007; Garcia-Godos and Lid, 2010; Weintraub et al., 2015). Wartime experience, including exposure to violence, varies subnationally. Does it also affect individual-level preferences, especially those for peace or continued war? There has been a burgeoning research agenda examining the impact of violence on voting and political attitudes more generally, especially regarding Colombia (e.g., Arjona, 2016a, 2016b; Daly, 2016; Gallego, 2018; García-Sánchez, 2016; Matanock and Garbiras-Sanchez 2018; Steele, 2017; Weintraub et al., 2015). Garcia-Sanchez, 2016 analyzes the effect of territorial control by a rebel group on voting behavior in Colombia and finds that in regions that were controlled by paramilitary groups, citizens are more likely to support rightist governments; in regions controlled by the rebels, support for rightist governments declines. Relatedly, Arjona (2016a) looks at political dynamics and order within war zones, finding that in some war zones rebels are an authority that substitute for the State. In these cases, political and social order exist under a “rebelocracy”. If order is installed and stability exists, Arjona argues, violence should be largely controlled and a sort of peaceful equilibrium obtained. Hence, citizens might then oppose a peace agreement if the introduction of nationwide peace may jeopardize their own political and social order. Indeed, as research by Gallego (2018) has shown, conflict actors adopt different strategies to increase turnout in support of their favored candidates while other groups seek to reduce turnout. Other research suggests a more nuanced relationship between violence and voting. According to Weintraub et al. (2015, 1) in the 2014 presidential election President Santos received the highest support in communities with “moderate levels of insurgent violence”, while doing “poorly in communities with both very high and very low violence”. Hence, we cannot assume a strict linear relationship between violence and voting, even though the issues were somewhat different and more diverse in the presidential elections two years prior to the peace referendum. A recent special issue of Conflict Management and Peace Science addressed the Colombian conflict and peace process. Liendo and Braithwaite (2018) find that attitudes about peace were influenced more by political preferences than conflict experiences, although they also find that support for the peace talks was closely related to support for the FARC. More specifically, Matanock and Garbiras-Diaz (2018) found in their contribution that the peace process overall was more popular among the public than many of the elements of the agreement, and that FARC rebel endorsement of the agreement reduced support even further. Hence, it is one thing to express support for a peace process in which one can project whatever hopes, fears and interpretations one chooses, but it is quite another thing to support a peace agreement in all its messy details and political compromises. Beyond Colombia as well, research on the impact of violence on individuals' views and opinions about the after-effects of war in general and peace agreements in particular has also garnered increasing attention (Dyrstad, 2012). Dyrstad finds that while ethno-nationalist views increased in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia between 1989 (prior to the breakup of the former Yugoslavia and the resulting wars), Macedonia and Kosovo saw little change. Only in Croatia did direct exposure to violence harden nationalist views. Other work has shown that civil wars lead to long-term, adverse health outcomes (Ghobarah

International Criminal Court has also been concerned that Colombia might not be adhering to the ICC treaty, which expects states to provide appropriate justice for all those who have violated international law. As well, many sectors of Colombian society were also opposed to the guaranteed seats in the Colombian legislature the FARC received. After years of violence, many Colombians were not able to accept the former FARC members back into the social and political life of the country. They may have wished for an end to the violence, but the bitter pill of acceptance of the long-hated FARC was too much to swallow for many. Finally, one cannot escape the role played by President Juan Manuel Santos and his administration in shaping the outcome of the peace plebiscite. There were frequent allegations of corruption, especially concerning bribes paid by the Brazilian conglomerate, Odebrecht, to President Santos, members of his party and many others in the Colombian government for sweetheart deals in construction, energy, and mining. High levels of poverty and inequality, which by some estimates is still among the highest in the world,2 coupled with more recent sluggish economic growth gave the public more concern over Santo's leadership and diminished his political capital further. His popularity among the public had been quite low and generally in decline throughout his time in office. Over 60% of the public believed the situation under President Santos had worsened, and his approval ratings hovered in the 20's at the time of the October 2016 vote.3 The president and the peace agreement were often fused together in many people's perceptions of the end of the conflict. Given that the peace making process consumed a good portion of Santos's tenure in office, this is hardly surprising. President Santos and his administration were not able to generate the level of trust in the agreement necessary for its passage. Coming toward the end of a long and sometimes difficult term in office, President Santos was not in a good position to capitalize on the war weariness of ordinary Colombians. The environment in which the peace agreement came to a vote on October 2 was characterized by intense debate over many issues in the agreement. There was a restructuring of political parties as both former President Uribe and President Santos created new political parties in the face of the split of the Liberal party, and the further fracturing of the traditional Liberal/Conservative divide in Colombia that complicated the political environment and engaged other political divisions in Colombian society. With hindsight the rejection of the peace agreement becomes more understandable, although we note that the reasons proffered at this point have not been rigorously confirmed with analysis of the results. Therefore, we suggest a more complete understanding of why the public rejected this agreement requires that we delve more deeply into the salience of these types of factors to the people of Colombia in their assessment of the peace process. 3. War and violence The impacts of war on a society are rarely evenly distributed across the population (e.g., Buhaug and Gates, 2002; Gutierrez Sanin and Wood, 2017; Kalyvas, 2006; Raleigh et al., 2010; Ross, 2004; Salehyan and Gleditsch, 2006). Civil wars in particular are often fought in specific areas because of their proximity to international borders (rebels can more easily evade government capture in foreign states), resources (e.g., oil), locations in which ethnic populations comingle (e.g., the wars in the former Yugoslavia in which fighting was most frequent and intense where Bosniak, Croat and Serb populations were interspersed) and other such factors that concentrate the objects of war. Yet while the large-scale engagements of civil war may be felt most in those contested zones, the rest of the nation does not escape war's violence. Rebels may 2 As found at https://www.forbes.com/sites/nathanielparishflannery/2017/ 09/25/will-peace-talks-really-help-colombias-economy/#36380e816904. 3 See https://colombiareports.com/peace-no-peace-colombia-disapprovespresident-lot/.

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disappearances, torture, extrajudicial killing – at meaningfully higher levels during war than in its absence (e.g. Poe and Tate, 1994; DeMeritt, 2016). Gang rape and other forms of wartime sexual violence are on the rise around the world, and threaten the prospects for postconflict peace and reconstruction (Cohen, 2013; Plumper and Neumayer, 2006). And then, there are the destruction of property, loss of life and other manifold violations of personal integrity that accompany protracted and multi-sided violence. Even beyond all this, war harms communities in many other ways (Kang and Meernik 2005; Melander et al., 2016). Its violence disrupts community life and can make it difficult or impossible to develop the local economy, local infrastructure, educational system, and public health system, among others, which in turn deepens individual insecurity. The loss of children to forced recruitment makes it difficult for families to survive while the scattering of anti-personnel mines throughout a region make normal business like farming and walking to school fraught with danger. Individuals must be focused on their own survival and dealing with the demands of armies looking for intelligence, food, shelter and other forms of support. Living in an insecure environment makes it difficult if not impossible to plan for the future. Individual and family decisions regarding planting, investing, traveling and even starting a family all become problematic in the wartime environment of insecurity and instability. A peace agreement that signals an end to the widespread destruction and promises an end to these human rights abuses would seem to be expressly designed to engage the interests of those most affected by violence. Tellez (2019, 1054) writes that, in the case of Colombia there is, “… strong evidence that civilians living in conflict zones are more supportive of the peace process overall and more willing to grant concessions to the FARC than those living outside these areas”. And as Fabbe et al. (2019, 103) have shown in research on Darfur, among many individuals who have experienced greater suffering during war there is a remarkable flexibility and “… willingness to settle and make peace” (see also Hazlett, 2018). While we must concede that not everyone who lived through the violence of the FARC war in Colombia would be supportive of the peace treaty for some may prefer different terms, in general we would expect that most people would prefer peace in their community to war and that this inclination will lead them to support the peace treaty with the FARC. Second, as research has shown when citizens are exposed to violence, they often become more resilient and socially engaged (Bauer et al., 2016; McAdam, 2013; Hobfall et al., 2011; Winter and Yang, 2016). The notion of resilience refers to the ability of some individuals and some communities to become stronger in the face of adversity and has been defined as a “process of patterned adjustments adopted by a society or an individual in the face of endogenous or exogenous shocks”. Further, resilience is not a “quality, a paradigm, or a theory … [but rather is] an inherently dynamic and complex process” (Bourbeau, 2015, 376). It has been integral to explaining individual reactions to urban violence (Muggah, 2013); post-election violence (Becchetti et al., 2014); and political and ethnic violence (McAdam, 2013; Hobfall et al., 2011; Winter and Yang, 2016). One consequence of resilience borne of violence appears to be increased social and civic engagement (e.g., Bauer et al., 2016). Scholars (Bellows and Miguel, 2009; Blattman, 2009) have shown that victims of violence are generally more engaged than other citizens in the electoral process. Bellows and Miguel (2009) find in Sierra Leone that households that experienced violence from civil war were more likely than other households to join community organizations. Blattman (2009) found that individuals who were forcibly recruited into the Lord's Resistance Army in northern Uganda were more likely than those who were not recruited to vote and become involved in community affairs. In fact, he finds that exposure to violence is the single most powerful wartime experience that accounts for the relationship between abduction by the rebel army and voting (Blattman, 2009, 231), and that it is principally the witnessing of such violence that leads to greater political

et al., 2003), as well as potentially severe psychological trauma for many victims (Palić et al., 2015; Opačić et al., 2006; Başoğlu et al., 2005). This research suggests that exposure to violence may in some cases increase individual ethno-nationalism, and that is it costly both physically and psychologically. One critical strand of research concerns how violence affects an individual's level of civic and political engagement with society. Scholars have increasingly found that many individuals become more psychologically resilient after exposure to violence (Bauer et al., 2016). Bauer et al. find, in their review of the extensive literature on resiliency and violence that people who are exposed to violence are more likely to become cooperative, participate in social activities, take leadership roles, and give altruistically and that this positive impact of exposure to violence holds up across gender and age and among victims as well as perpetrators. The evidence also suggests that in the more controlled environment of experimental laboratories, that people are more inclined toward altruistic giving. (Bauer et al., 2016, 3). Indeed, across a wide variety of social and political situations, research has shown that prosocial behavior emerges after many conflicts, as an “evolved response to external threats” (Bauer et al., 2016, 4). Bauer et al. (2016, 24–25) write that “evolutionary researchers from several disciplines have argued that our species' long history of intergroup competition may have favored adaptive psychological responses that promote the success of an individual's group relative to other groups—especially relative to antagonistic outgroups.” Such literature suggests a more explicit link between violence and social/political behaviors than is often found in other studies of violence that do not delve into the social and psychological processes that mediate between experience and preferences. Of course, preferences are both unobservable and – for purposes of understanding national-level electoral outcomes – largely inconsequential. They matter only if and when they translate into political action. In Colombia as in all democracies, this is accomplished most easily by casting a vote. If violence affects preferences and preferences affect vote choice, then violence should by all accounts affect vote choice. Below, we suggest that both the pro-social attitudes that often develop in the aftermath of violence, and voter self-interest help explain why those most affected by violence ought to be most likely to support peace in general and the Colombian peace referendum in particular.

4. War, violence, and elections We argue that violence affects individual-level preferences about war and peace. To be sure, the impact of violence on individuals' political preferences are not likely to be consistent across all groups and all areas of any state, especially one as diverse as Colombia. It is our general contention that exposure to violence, however, tends to increase support for peace in general and peace agreements in particular. We further argue that exposure to violence affects political preferences through two principal routes. First, we expect that voters in conflict zones whose lives and livelihoods have been substantially damaged by the violence associated with war will be more likely to support the peace plebiscite because peace “promises” a more stable, secure and predictable environment.4 War creates numerous hardships for those living in conflict zones that are likely to be ameliorated after the guns fall silent. Noncombatants suffer the worst forms of repression – political imprisonment, 4 We note, however, that given the failures of Colombian governments to live up to the terms of past conflict settlements, especially in the 1980's when many leftists were targeted for assassination, we might expect some individuals who have experienced violence to be skeptical of the government's intentions. They may not believe the government will live up to its obligations. Nonetheless, we contend that most individuals would prefer an imperfect peace to a dangerous war.

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there is evidence that partisan cues influence not only individual-level vote choices, but also aggregate-level electoral outcomes (e.g. Boehmke et al., 2012; Smith and Tolbert, 2001). This research suggests voting in ballot election occurs in the context of the broader political environment in which there may be other matters of concern to the public and in which pre-existing political divisions may become engaged. In the case of the Colombian peace referendum, political and partisan cues were readily available. The Colombian peace referendum was held in a highly charged and complex political environment in which the traditional party system was undergoing transformation; personal rivalries and antagonisms between President Santos and his predecessor, President Uribe became ever more highly charged, and there were escalating accusations of corruption and economic mismanagement against the government of President Santos, which resulted in a substantial drop in his approval ratings and loss of political capital necessary to guide a controversial and complex peace agreement to victory. Hence, it is critical to account for the role played by this political environment in the rejection of the peace agreement referenda. As Karl (2017) points out, the story of violence in Colombia is a political one, about democratization and fights between different political forces. Although the conflict looks like other civil conflicts, it is unique in the way that public support for peace has been deeply affected by political polarization (Matanock and Garbiras-Diaz, 2018). As the divisions between Álvaro Uribe and Juan Manuel Santos worsened, support for peace decreased. This suggests that elite positions served as clues that helped shape individual preferences (Matanock and GarciaSanchez, 2017). As Matanock and Garcia-Sanchez (2017) demonstrate in their analysis of the Colombian peace agreement, subjecting such agreements to a plebiscite may enflame and make more prominent elite divisions in society, thereby making passage of such referenda all the more difficult. Indeed, former President Uribe and his new party, the Democratic Center, sought to link a number of controversial issues with the peace agreement in order to discredit it, including the primacy of private property, “traditional” values, and fears of gay rights and the emergence of a leftist Colombian government aligned with other far left governments and perceived supporters of the FARC, such as Cuba and Venezuela (Gill, 2017). In addition to the highly charged split between the mentor and protégé that overlaid debate on the agreement, President Santos's need to win a political victory to legitimate his regime introduced yet another personal and political angle into the debate that detracted from a more objective evaluation of the agreement. Scholars have argued that the referendum concerned more than just peace as President Santos sought to gain legitimacy for his regime as his public support declined significantly (Davalos et al., 2018). Finally, as Davalos et al. (2018, 104) point out in cases like Colombia, where there has been little national experience with referenda, “Partisan education and messaging become critical, but large, centrist parties have the most difficulty maintaining coherent support for referenda.” At the same time, research by Liendo and Braithwaite (2018) shows that many of the political attitudes toward the peace agreement paralleled voting in the 2014 elections, thus demonstrating the difficulty of changing attitudes in a highly partisan environment. Given such challenges of shaping political attitudes, if President Santos were going to rally support for the agreement, he needed substantial political capital to manage this educational campaign in a highly charged environment. Such was not the case, however, as the lack of trust in and support for President Santos mattered greatly in individuals support for the peace process (Carlin et al., 2016). The fortunes of the referendum were inextricably tied to the man who brought it to a vote (Arjona, 2016b)5 and the larger political environment in which such the referendum took place, which influenced voter preferences (Branton, 2003; Nicholson, 2003; Rogers and

engagement. This growing resilience tends to lead to more pro-social attitudes, which increase social and civic engagement and investment in their communities. We would then expect that such individual would prefer their communities be protected from a continuation of more violence, and would support the notion of peace generally and a peace agreement designed to protect their community from the ravages of further violence. In practice, that means a preference for peace over the violence of continued war, and thus we would expect that individuals will support and vote for the candidate or outcome that most closely aligns with their own inclinations toward peace (García-Sánchez, 2016; Steele, 2017; Weintraub et al., 2015). For some individuals, however, it is possible that exposure to violence diminishes their support for peace and increases their desire for retribution. Some research has found that violence does not exercise a consistent impact on support for peace and speculate that the diversity of attitudes resulting from exposure to violence may result in inconsistent and statistically insignificant findings (Liendo and Braithwaite, 2018). While we cannot rule out such divergent impacts of violence, we tend to find more research that supports some type of positive effect of violence on support for peace (Davalos et al., 2018; Weintraub et al., 2015). Therefore, we contend that because of the pro-social attitudes and community engagement that scholars have often found resulting among those affected by violence, and because of the more tangible benefits of peace that the treaty promised to bring to these communities, we should expect that communities that experienced higher levels of wartime violence will be most supportive of the peace referendum (García-Sánchez, 2016; Steele, 2017; Weintraub et al., 2015). Of course, the likelihood of individual-level support does not scale to any aggregate outcome. To explain municipal-level support for Colombia's peace referendum we assume that on average, as a municipality experiences increasing levels of violence, most citizens in that municipality are exposed to increasing levels of violence as well. We also assume that every individual has some unobserved threshold of experience with violence above which they prefer peace to continued war and cast a vote in favor. As a municipality's experience with violence increases, more and more of its citizens surpass their own thresholds and choose to cast votes for peace. Therefore, we must concede that we are not able to map directly from the individual level argument to the municipal level data. While this does raise some concerns regarding the possibility of an ecological error in our analysis and interpretation, we contend that the greater the level of violence in a community, the greater the likelihood people individually will develop attitudes that are more pro-peace, which in turn increase the strength of municipal level support for the peace treaty. Future research should investigate the more direct connections between individual experiences with violence and support for the peace treaty. We suggest the following hypothesis: H1. At the municipal level, greater levels of violence will tend to increase support for the Colombian peace referendum. 5. The Colombian political context and support for the referendum Ballot initiative elections differ from candidate elections by virtue of the fact that ballot initiatives lack partisanship labels (e.g. Campbell et al., 1960; Jacobson, 2004). As such, the electorate relies on readily available cues in order to vote in a manner that is consistent with their preferences (Alvarez and Butterfield, 2000; Boehmke and Patty, 2007; Lupia, 1992, 1994; Gerber and Phillips, 2003). Notably, existing research finds that the electorate commonly uses political cues such as political elite and candidate endorsements to inform their vote (Alvarez and Butterfield, 2000; Banducci, 1998; Bowler and Donovan 1998; Donovan and Snipp 1994; Karp, 1998; Lupia, 1992, 1994). Further,

5 See also https://www.newstatesman.com/world/south-america/2016/11/ month-what-went-wrong-colombia-referendum.

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individual indicators of violence by the municipal population (aggregated for the years 2012–2015 to capture the most recent period of the conflict). This violence measure ranges from 0.0001 to 1.11 with a mean of 0.06 and a standard deviation of 0.11. Data on voter preferences for President Santos in the 2014 presidential election were obtained from the Registraduría Nacional de Estado Civil as described above. We used the percentage of the votes in the runoff election for Santos by municipality.7 Support for Santos ranges from 5.9 percent to 94.6 with a mean of 46.5 and a standard deviation of 20.8. Fig. 1 presents two scatterplot graphs reflecting the relationship between the support for the peace referendum and the two key independent variables—violence and support for Santos. The left panel displays the relationship between support for the peace referendum and violence, while the right panel displays the relationship between support for the peace referendum and support for Santos. Both panels reflect a positive relationship though the trend is more uniform for support for Santos. Substantively, these figures suggest as rates of violence increase support for the peace referendum tends to increase. Likewise, as support for Santos increases support for the peace referendum tends to increase. In addition to the primary variables of interest, the model also includes several potentially confounding municipal-level social and economic demographic factors.8 We use data obtained from a databank hosted by the Department of Economics at the University of the Andes, which include a variety of municipal data derived from the Colombian census.9 We note that the population and other municipal level data we utilize are from 2015 and are not from the 2005 census. We operationalize ruralness as the percentage of the municipal-level population residing in a rural area. To control for differences in support of the referendum as a function of age, we include a measure of the percent of the municipal-level population that is between 20 and 39 years old. We account for the gender make-up of municipalities with a measure that reflects the percentage of the population that is female. We operationalize racial context as the percentage of the municipal-level population that is white. We use data culled from the Colombian National Department of Planning to measure government presence at the municipality-level.10 To account for the federal government's presence across municipalities we created a measure of the total federal government spending per capita. Finally, to control for the economic welfare of municipalities we use municipal-level infant mortality rate, which reflects the number of deaths per 1000 live births. The infant mortality rate is culled from the Colombian National Administrative Department of Statistics (DANE).11

Middleton 2015). As Branton (2003, 369) states: “The expectation that individual-level voting behavior in ballot elections exhibits consistent patterns is based on the assumption that ballot propositions are not necessarily discrete or independent political events. The initiative process is often influenced by various factors including candidate campaigns, the initiative process in other states, or outside influences.” Therefore, we argue that the political environment in which voting occurs, and in particular, public support for the actor bringing the issue to a vote establishes a critical background factor that will directly and indirectly influence voting on referenda. Because President Santos had been so strongly identified with the peace treaty with the FARC and the referendum vote, we posit that his popular support among the people of Colombia was strongly influential in determining the outcome of the referendum vote. In particular, we suggest that patterns of support for President Santos and the most recent presidential election prior to the signing of the peace agreement will strongly parallel voting in favor of the peace referendum. We would have preferred to use more recent data on support for Santos, especially presidential approval data. However, such data would be substantially limited given the typical sample sizes of these polls. Especially because our unit of analysis is the municipality, there would not be sufficient polling data on presidential approval for each of the 1100 + municipalities in Colombia. We address potential concerns about endogeneity among the level of violence and support for Santos below. Hypothesis 2. The greater the level of support for President Santos in the 2014 presidential election in a municipality, the greater the level of support for the peace agreement.

6. A model of voter preferences on the Colombian peace referendum To assess the impact of violence and voter partisanship on support for the Colombian peace agreement, we utilize data from the most micro-level unit of publicly available information—the municipality. The municipal data provide us with a rich trove of information regarding the spatial distribution of violence and support for Santos, as well as other potential determinants of support for the treaty as we discuss below. Therefore, we posit that the municipality is a useful level at which to test our expectations. There are a total of 1122 municipalities in Colombia. Due to missing data the final analysis includes 1053 municipalities, which is 94% of the universe of cases. Our dependent variable is the percentage of support for the Colombian peace referendum at the municipal level (“yes” votes divided by “yes and “no” votes). The measure ranges from 16.2 to 96.1 percent with a mean of 51.9 percent and a standard deviation of 16.9 at the municipality-level. These data were collected from the Registraduría Nacional del Estado Civil. Our two key independent variables are violence and voter preferences for President Santos as revealed in the 2014 presidential elections in Colombia. Our data on violence in the war between the Colombian government and the FARC guerillas are from Registro Único de Víctimas (http://rni.unidadvictimas.gov.co/). These data consist of a number of specific, self-reported indicators of violence and other consequences of the war including: land dispossession, terrorist attacks, sexual crimes, threats, forced disappearances, homicides, displacements, anti-personnel mine incidents, loss of goods, kidnapping, torture, and recruitment of child soldiers.6 We calculated an overall level of violence per capita score by dividing the sum total of all the

7. Results As noted, we use municipality-level data to examine the factors that 7

As a robustness check, we regressed the percent support for Santos in the 2014 presidential election on violence. We extracted the resulting residuals and included these residuals in the support for the referendum model. This approach provides a measure of support for Santos that is orthogonal to the violence. The results are presented in Table A and Fig. B of the Appendix. Substantively, the results are consistent with the results presented in the paper. Again, we find in areas that experienced heightened levels of violence, support for the peace referendum is significantly higher when compared to areas that experienced less violence. 8 Scatterplot graphs reflecting the relationship between the support for the peace referendum and the control variables are presented in Fig. A of the Appendix. 9 The data can be found online at https://datoscede.uniandes.edu.co. 10 The data can be found online at: https://www.dnp.gov.co/programas/ desarrollo-territorial/paginas/ejecuciones-presupuestales.aspx#googtrans/gl/ en. 11 The data can be found online at https://www.dane.gov.co/index.php/ estadisticas-por-tema/demografia-y-poblacion/nacimientos-y-defunciones.

6 In the case of victims of homicide or forced disappearance, reporting is by persons who are child, parent, grandparent, part of the household, spouse, permanent companion, same-sex partner, or part of the victim's household.

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Fig. 1. Scatterplot of support for peace referendum across key variables.

support for the referendum are at the darker end of the color scale. Tobler's (1970) first law of geography states: “Everything is related to everything else, but near things are more related than distant things.” Indeed, Fig. 2 not only demonstrates there are differences in support for the treaty across municipalities, it also suggests there are spatial patterns in terms of support and opposition. For instance, many municipalities in the central region appear to exhibit lower levels of support—as reflected by the lighter shade of purple—while municipalities on the western edge and southeastern region of Colombia appear to exhibit higher levels of support. These patterns suggest it is important to consider if support for the referendum in one municipality is correlated with support in spatially proximal municipalities. In other words, it is important to consider if and the extent to which spatial autocorrelation is present. In addition to the statistical importance of accounting for spatial correlation, existing research lends theoretical reasons for examining the impact of spatial correlation in ballot initiative research. A growing body of research highlights the importance of spatial context in ballot elections (e.g. Boehmke et al., 2012; Gerber and Phillips, 2003). A common theme in this literature is proximity serves as a proxy for selfinterest. Voters who reside in close proximity to some geographic-based factor (e.g., proposed development, border, etc.) may encounter higher costs or benefits than voters further removed should an initiative pass (or fail). Further, in an examination of 3300 German ballot initiatives, Asatryan et al. (2017) finds support for ballot initiatives has spillover effects in neighboring jurisdictions. In the context of the Colombia peace referendum, this line of reasoning suggests support for the initiative may be influenced not only by the level of violence in a single municipality, but also violence in proximal municipalities. To determine if spatial correlation is an issue with the data, we estimate a global index Moran's I, which is a statistical test that measures the strength of spatial autocorrelation in the distribution of the dependent variable (Anselin, 1988, 1995; Darmofal, 2006). The Global Moran's I on our measure of support for the peace treaty is positive and significant (0.20, p < 0.0001). Substantively, this positive spatial autocorrelation indicates support for the treaty is spatially clustered across municipalities. Further, the significant result allows us to reject

Fig. 2. Municipal-level support for referendum.

influenced support for the peace referendum. Fig. 2 presents a choropleth map of municipal-level support for the peace referendum. Municipalities with lower levels of support for the referendum fall at the light end of the color scale, while municipalities with higher levels of 7

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the null hypothesis that there is zero spatial autocorrelation present in municipal-level support for the peace treaty. OLS regression assumes there is no spatial dependency in the data distribution, or rather the observations on the dependent variable are independent from other observations. In this case, the use of OLS would render biased and inconsistent estimates (Anselin, 1988). Therefore, we utilize a spatial autoregressive model with autoregressive disturbances (SARAR) to estimate our model of support for the peace treaty (Kelejian and Prucha, 1998, 2010).12 The spatial regression results are presented in Table 1.13 The first column presents the SARAR coefficients as well as the spatial lag (λ) and spatial error (ρ) parameter estimates. As LeSage and Kelley (2009) note, spatial regression models require a more detailed interpretation of the coefficients than standard OLS results. This is because spatial regression results include not only information about the impact of a change in an independent variable for a singular spatial unit, but also that change's indirect effects on other spatial units. For example, a change in violence for a given municipality will affect support for the peace treaty in that specific municipality (direct effect) and potentially also affect support for the peace treaty in other municipalities (spillover effect). As such, we provide the direct, spillover, and total effect for each independent variable in Table 1. The second column presents the direct effects, the third column presents the spillover effects, and the fourth column presents the total effects for each covariate. The direct effect reflects the impact of a change in an independent variable on support for the peace treaty. The spillover—or indirect—effect reflects the impact of a change in an independent variable on support for the peace treaty in proximal municipalities. The total effect is the sum of the direct and indirect effect of an independent variable. First, we consider the spatial lag (λ) and spatial error (ρ) parameter estimates. Both parameter estimates, λ and ρ, are positive and statistically significant. The estimated λ indicates support for the peace referendum in a municipality is impacted by support for the peace referendum in neighboring municipalities. The estimated ρ indicates there is a positive and significant spatial dependence in the error term across municipalities. These results clearly highlight the impact of the spatial distribution of the data. Thus, utilizing the SARAR model allows for a more appropriate examination of the factors that influenced support for the peace treaty. Second, we consider the impact of violence on municipal-level support for the peace referendum. The results indicate that increased violence is positively and significantly associated with support for the Colombian peace referendum, which lends evidence to support Hypothesis 1. To illustrate the effect, we graphically present the expected value of support for the peace referendum at the municipal-level as violence increases from minimum to maximum value in Fig. 3. The graph demonstrates that municipal-level violence has a positive and significant impact on support for the peace referendum. Substantively, the finding suggests areas exposed to heightened incidence of wartime violence exhibited more support for the peace agreement than

Table 1 Support fee Peace Referendum.

Violence % Santos % Rural % Age 20–39 Govt Spending Infant Mortality Rate % White % Female Intercept

N Cases Wald χ 2

Coef.

Effect

(S.E.)

Direct

Spillover

Total

10.389* (4.248) 0.550*** (0.022) 0.090*** (0.013) −0.413*** (0.120) 0.011 (0.006) 0.100 (0.059) −0.0322 (0.015) −0.226 (0.166) 30.976** (10.422) 0.225*** (0.038) 0.453*** (0.053) 1053 2447.44***

10.491* (4.291) 0.556*** (0.021) 0.091*** (0.013) −0.418*** (0.121) 0.011 (0.007) 0.101 (0.060) −0.022 (0.015) −0.228 (0.168)

2.916* (1.364) 0.154*** (0.030) 0.025*** (0.007) −0.116** (0.042) 0.003 (0.002) 0.028 (0.016) −0.006 (0.004) −0.063 (0.049)

13.408* (5.541) 0.710*** (0.029) 0.116*** (0.018) −0.534*** (0.157) 0.129 (0.075) 0.129 (0.075) −0.028 (0.019) −0.292 (0.215)

Standard errors in parentheses. *p < 0.05. **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.001.

compared to areas that were exposed to less violence. The direct effect of violence as it increases from the minimum value of 0.0001 to one standard deviation above the mean value of 0.17 is 2.28 percentage increase in support for the peace referendum. Further, the direct effect of a one unit increase in violence is associated with 10.49 percentage increase in support for the peace referendum. Finally, the direct effect of violence as it increases from minimum to maximum is associated with a 14.74 percentage point increase (51.15–65.9 percent) in support for the peace referendum. The across-municipality spillover effect of a one unit increase in violence is associated with 2.96 percentage increase in support for the peace referendum. Substantively, the results indicate that heightened exposure to violence is associated with greater support for the peace referendum. To illustrate the spatial spillover effect, we graphically present the change in the indirect effect of violence in the municipality of Arauca, which experienced its share of wartime violence and thus provides a good illustrative example, as violence increases from the observed value (0.0521) to 1 standard deviation above the observed value (0.1595) in Fig. 4. The darkest purple area represents Arauca, which obviously experiences the greatest change. The change in violence in Arauca spills over to the nearby municipalities; yet, has no spillover effect in municipalities that are further removed. Third, we consider the impact of municipal-level support for Santos on municipal-level support for the peace referendum. The results indicate that increased support for Santos is positively and significantly associated with support for the Colombian peace referendum, which lends evidence to support Hypothesis 2. To illustrate the effect, we graphically present the expected value of support for the peace referendum as municipal-level as support for Santos increases from minimum to maximum value in Fig. 5. The graph demonstrates that municipal-level support for Santos has a positive and significant impact on support for the peace referendum. The direct effect of a one percentage point increase in support for Santos is associated with 0.56 percentage increase in support for the peace referendum. The direct effect of support for Santos as it increases from the one standard deviation below the mean to above the mean is 29.5 percent increase in support for the peace referendum. Finally, the direct effect of support

12

We began by estimating a spatial lag model (SAR) and a spatial error model (SEM). The SAR results indicate there is significant spatial clustering on the distribution of the dependent variable. The SEM results likewise indicate the spatial clustering is generated by unmeasured covariates. Ignoring spatial dependence in the dependent variable may produce bias and inconsistency in the estimate, while ignoring the spatial dependence in the error may produce biased standard errors (Anselin, 1988). As such, we use the SARAR to address both forms of spatial dependence. We would like to note the key findings of interesting are substantively consistent across the OLS, SAR, SEM, and SARAR models. 13 To highlight the stability of our findings we estimated a standard OLS. The key results of interest are substantively consistent to the spatial regression results. Additionally, we estimated the model utilizing a log transformed version of the violence measure. The results are consistent the results presented in Table 1. 8

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Fig. 3. The direct impact of municipal-level violence.

spillover effect in municipalities that are further removed. Finally, only two of the contextual control variables are significantly associated with support for the referendum. Ruralness is positively and significantly associated with support for the Colombian peace referendum. The direct effect of a one percent increase in ruralness is associated with 0.09 percentage increase in support for the peace referendum. The across-municipal spillover effect of a one percent increase in ruralness is associated with 0.03 percentage increase in support for the peace referendum. Further, the results indicate that age is negatively associated with support for the Colombian peace referendum. As the municipality-level population that falls between age 20–39 increases by one percent there is a corresponding .42 percentage decrease in support for the peace referendum. The across-municipal spillover effect of a one percentage point increase in the municipality-level population that falls between age 20–39 there is a corresponding .12 percentage decrease in support for the peace referendum. We also tested to determine if other measures of governmental presence (e.g., distance of the municipality from Bogota) and governmental effectiveness (e.g., electrical coverage in the municipality, the GINI index) had an appreciable impact on municipal level voting for the peace agreement, but none of these variables exercised a statistically significant impact. 8. Conclusion The results demonstrate, as we hypothesized that those municipalities that were exposed to the highest levels of political violence were greatly in favor of the Colombian peace referendum in comparison to those municipalities that did not suffer nearly so much from the violence. We had argued in favor of this hypothesis for two central reasons. Based on research on resilience (Bauer et al., 2016) we suggest that those individuals living in areas that experienced more violence would develop more pro-social attitudes and have a greater level of personal investment in their community, which would lead them to support the peace referendum. Second, we argued that voters in these areas would have substantial, practical incentives for supporting the peace agreement. We believe these results help demonstrate that while many of those who experience violence may wish to pursue retribution against those who have ravaged their communities, exposure to violence more generally leads to support for peace. The Colombian case also demonstrates that the political context in which such voting takes place must be taken into account. Voting on the peace referendum occurred in a highly charged and changing

Fig. 4. Violence: Spillover effect (Arauca).

for Santos as it increases from minimum to maximum is associated with a 63.6 percentage point increase (23.2–86.8 percent) in support for the peace referendum. The across-municipality spillover effect of a one percentage point increase in support to for Santos is associated with 0.16 percentage increase in support for the peace referendum. Substantively, the results indicate that municipalities that were more supportive of Santos likewise exhibited heightened support for support for the peace referendum. To illustrate the spatial spillover effect, we graphically present the change in the indirect effect of support for Santos in the municipality of Arauca as support for Santos increases from the observed value (29.66) to 1 standard deviation above the observed value (50.47) in Fig. 6. The darkest purple area represents Arauca, which obviously experienced the greatest change. Again, we see the change in support for Santos in Arauca spills over to the nearby municipalities; yet, has no 9

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Fig. 5. Impact of support for Santo.

environment and the partisan and other cues available to voters. In more practical terms, our findings suggest that implementation of the peace agreement may well continue to divide Colombians. Municipalities that were most in favor of the agreement—those afflicted with high levels of political violence and those in rural areas—have often been the most neglected by the Colombian government. Will the opponents of the peace agreement, who are now a dominant force in the Colombian government with the recent presidential elections, be willing to expand the resources necessary and make the necessary social, economic and political changes the agreement calls for? Or, will they fall back into traditional patterns of governance in which these hinterlands are deprived of security and support? The prospects for the agreement's success would now seem to depend on those who have been most opposed to it. Moving forward, scholars would be well advised to study the implementation of the peace agreement in the context of the municipalities that have been the most and least supportive of the agreement. Finally, from a real-world perspective, we are left to question if there will be lingering political consequences when the populace and government hold divergent positions on the resolution of conflict. In the case of Colombia, consider the juxtaposition of the failed peace referendum and the government forged peace agreement with the FARC. This naturally raises the question if municipal-level opposition to the referendum. Now that President Duque has indicated he will not tear up the peace agreement, how much will its implementation and the political divisions the treaty engendered in Colombian society continue to influence Colombian elections? Will the peace treaty cleavages continue to have electoral consequences? How will the failing prospects for talks with the ELN rebel group influence support for the FARC treaty? Will ELN violence reduce support for the peace or will it inspire greater efforts to secure the benefits of the FARC treaty before more former FARC soldiers opt out of reintegration? Lastly, we would also suggest that scholars analyze ongoing support for the peace process and model public attitudes as a more dynamic process that can incorporate changes in the political environment that may influence support to build upon the more static set of factors we utilize in this paper. Given the rich data available on Colombian politics, we foresee the possibility of much excellent research.

Fig. 6. Support for Santos: Spillover effect (Arauca).

political environment involving the falling political fortunes of President Santos, and a highly partisan effort to defeat the referendum. Those opposed to the treaty mounted a fierce campaign in which they highlighted not just the problems they saw with the treaty's perceived lenient treatment toward the FARC, they also raised numerous other constitutional and moral issues, especially those involving conservative social values, in an attempt to discredit the agreement on moral terms. Our findings illustrate that voting on the Colombian referendum like other ballot initiatives is often strongly influenced by the political

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Appendix

Fig. A. Scatterplots of Support for the Peace Referendum and Independent Variables.

Fig. A presents scatterplot graphs reflecting the nature of the relationship between the support for the peace referendum and the each of the control variables. Table A Support for Peace Referendum.

Violence Santos Residuals % Rural %Age 20–39 Govt Spending Infant Morality Rate % White % Female Intercept

N Cases Wald χ 2

Coef.

Effect

(S.E.)

Direct

Spillover

Total

25.546*** (4.169) 0.550*** (0.022) 0.003 (0.013) −0.146 (0.121) −0.006 (0.007) 0.145* (0.059) −0.205*** (0.014) −0.704*** (0.166) 92.231*** (10.476) 0.225*** (0.038) 0.453*** (0.053) 1053 2447.44***

25.546*** (4.169) 0.556*** (0.021) 0.003 (0.013) −0.147 (0.122) −0.006 (0.006) 0.146* (0.060) −0.207*** (0.014) −0.711*** (0.168)

7.101*** (1.868) 0.154*** (0.030) 0.001 (0.004) −0.041 (0.035) −0.002 (0.002) 0.041* (0.016) −0.058*** (0.012) −0.198*** (0.061)

32.647*** (5.478) 0.710*** (0.029) 0.003 (0.017) −0.188 (0.156) −0.008 (0.008) 0.187* (0.074) −0.265*** (0.018) −0.909*** (0.216)

Standard errors in parentheses. *p < 0.05, **p < 0.01, p < 0.001.

Table A present the results of a model that regressed the percent support for Santos in the 2014 presidential election on violence. As a robustness check we extracted the resulting residuals and included these residuals in the support for the referendum model. This approach provides a measure of support for Santos that is orthogonal to the violence. Substantively, the results are consistent with the results presented in Table 1. This model indicates in areas that experienced heightened levels of violence, support for the peace referendum is significantly higher when compared to areas 11

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that experienced less violence.

Fig. B. Impact of Violence.

Fig. B graphically presents the expected value of support for the peace referendum at the municipal-level as violence increases from minimum to maximum value based on the model presented in Table A. The graph demonstrates that municipal-level violence has a positive and significant impact on support for the peace referendum. Substantively, the finding suggests areas exposed to heightened incidence of wartime violence exhibited more support for the peace agreement than compared to areas that were exposed to less violence. Appendix A. Supplementary data Supplementary data to this article can be found online at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.electstud.2019.102067.

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