Dr Andrea Ruggeri draws comparisons between Burundi and WWII-era Italy

Andrea Ruggeri has co-written an article for the Washington Post's 'Monkey Cage' blog (27 May) entitled 'What WWII-era Italy teaches us about post-conflict politics in places like Burundi'.

The article says, "Recent political events in Burundi are a legacy of a conflict that lasted for almost a decade. It is well known that civil wars affect countries’ political stability. In a recent study, we found that civil war experience can dramatically affect post-conflict democratic politics at the local level. More specifically, we studied new data on armed groups’ location and violent episodes about the civil war that occurred in Italy during the last phase of World War II to learn how local mobilization and violence during the war impacted later elections.

The Italian civil war between the partisan bands and the Nazi-Fascist forces was a major conflict, though somehow ‘lost’ in the general history of World War II. It took place between September 1943 and May 1945, caused 117,000 battle deaths and 10,000 victims of one-sided violence. The Italian case allows us to study democratic elections both before and after the conflict."

The full article can be read here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey-cage/wp/2015/05/27/what-wwii-era-italy-teaches-us-about-post-conflict-politics-in-places-like-burundi/