The Tolerance of Tamils: War-Related Experiences, Psychological Pathways, and the Probability of Granting Civil Liberties to Former Enemies

This article evaluates the psychological pathways between war exposure and the formation of political tolerance in Sri Lanka after the civil war between 1983 and 2009. To date, little is known in the political science literature about the interplay between war experiences, their psychological footprints, and the formation of political tolerance. Using survey data from 2016, we are able to evaluate the psychological consequences of war experiences, differentiating between the issues of both war-related distress and posttraumatic growth. Our results based on path models reveal that war exposure does not uniformly damage political tolerance: experiences of posttraumatic growth, a highly discussed phenomenon, are able to increase an individual’s probability of granting basic civil liberties to an opposing group.