This paper studies the effect of strengthening democracy, as captured by an increase in voting rights, on the incidence of violent civil conflict in nineteenth-century Colombia. Empirically studying the relationship between democracy and conflict is challenging, not only because of conceptual...

Violence in conflict settings is seldom random, making its effects indistinguishable from the intentions of the perpetrator. We leverage on the quasi-randomness of accidental landmine explosions to study how violence shapes electoral outcomes in Colombia. We combine the geolocation of landmine...

Criminal groups use violence strategically to manipulate the behavior of victims and bystanders. At the same time, violence is a stimulus that causes fear, which also shapes people’s reactions. Taking advantage of the randomness in the timing of antipersonnel landmine accidents in Colombia, as...