War and State-Building for the Ordinary Citizen

Abstract

What does state-building during wars look like for the ordinary citizen? The literature on state-building has often emphasized the ways in which mass mobilization leads to the expansion of state capacities, including the provision of infrastructure and welfare. Nonetheless, we know relatively little about how this process looks from the perspective of the ordinary citizen - as a civilian caught in the war, as a subject mobilized to serve, and as a veteran and survivor returning from one. How does war shape the behaviors of ordinary citizens during and after the war? In this dissertation titled War and State-Building for the Ordinary Citizen, I investigate the mechanisms that drive the mobilization and victimization of ordinary citizens during wars and those that shape the post-war relationship between the state and the mobilized.

I utilize historical data from archives, contemporary survey data, and various qualitative and statistical methods to address the relationship between the state and its citizens throughout its belligerent state-building process. Using original data on civilian killings during the Korean War, I find that communities that were historically exposed to more resistance against authority experienced more victimization by South Korean forces. The inherited manpower and institutions of repression from the prewar colonial period shaped this pattern of violence against civilians, as the existential state of early state-building provided the government an incentive to condone the victimization of false positives. I then turn to those who were mobilized by their own country to fight in wars overseas and evaluate whether areas from which more men who were sent to fight in the Vietnam War were killed also experienced more infrastructural growth. I find little evidence for the state redistributing economic benefits proportional to the sacrifices made by a region, which is contrary to the narrative of fairness that often occupied the political space during times of mass mobilization for warfare. I follow up this result with an investigation into the post-war relationship between those who returned alive - and find that veterans who were wounded by warfare are not necessarily less trusting of the government. It provides suggestive evidence of a mechanism by which the state can manage its relationship with those who sacrificed during the war effort, despite the fact that they were largely sent against their will and returned permanently wounded. Lastly, I turn to a particular type of wartime state mobilization - the mobilization of sexual slaves by the Japanese Imperial Army during the Second World War, to show that the treatment of these women was not correlated with their obedience or sacrifices made but rather proportional to their ethnic association with the enemy. Even as Japan imagined an empire, it was mobilizing and victimizing its subjects at once, utilizing violence to subjugate the periphery.

In sum, the findings of this dissertation suggest that the state often chooses to use destructive tactics against its citizens during wars yet does not show visible evidence of redistribution or compensation in proportion to the damages done to, or the sacrifices made by, its citizens during this violent process. War may make states, and states may make war—but the ordinary citizens who pay for war may not reap the benefits from state-building in proportion to the price they have paid.