Civilian Noncooperation as a Source of Legitimacy. Innovative Youth Reactions in the Face of Local Violence

Introduction How communities respond to violence constitute some of the most transcendental decisions civilians make during war. These decisions leave enduring legacies with which communities will live with in the aftermath of war (Nordstrom, 1997). These legacies, in turn, pose opportunities and challenges for post-conflict reconstruction and peacebuilding. However, as one of the most comprehensive reviews of the scholarly work on war’s causes and consequences concluded few years ago, “[t]he social and institutional legacies of conflict are arguably the most important but least understood of all war impacts” (Blattman and Miguel, 2010, 42).