Effects of promoting conflict management: evidence from Guatemala’s Polochic Valley

Land conflicts in low-income countries often do not lend themselves to top-down, externally driven peacebuilding. We therefore study how bottom-up, community-based peacebuilding can instead help resolve such violence. This paper evaluates an intervention in Guatemala’s Polochic Valley that aimed to improve access to and attitudes towards local mediation mechanisms. Using the synthetic control method, we find that conflict in the Polochic Valley is reduced as a consequence of the intervention. Results of a behavioural experiment explore plausible mechanisms, including reductions in individuals’ perceptions that implicit violence is an effective conflict resolution tool. Within the framework of bottom-up peacebuilding, these results suggest that localised approaches to conflict mediation contribute to more peaceful societies, both through behavioural change at the individual level and through reductions in violence.