Replication Data for: LAWS IN CONFLICT: Legacies of War, Gender, and Legal Pluralism in Chechnya

How do legacies of conflict affect choices between state and nonstate legal institutions? This article studies this question in Chechnya, where state law coexists with Sharia and customary law. The author focuses on the effect of conflict-induced disruption of gender hierarchies, because nonstate legal orders are explicitly discriminatory against women. The author finds that women in Chechnya are more likely to rely on state law than men and that this gender gap in legal preferences and behavior is especially large in more-victimized communities. The author infers from this that the conflict created the conditions for women in Chechnya to pursue their interests through state law—albeit not without resistance. Women’s legal mobilization has generated a backlash from the Chechen government, which has attempted to reinstate a patriarchal order. The article concludes that such conflict may induce legal mobilization among the weak and that gender might become a central cleavage during state-building processes in postconflict environments.