Wartime victimization and the populist vote

• Applicant: Dr. Max Schaub
• Subject Area: Political Science
• Term: since 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 456041321

Across the Western World, democracies are being challenged by right-wing populist ideas, politicians and parties. The rise of right-wing populism has been linked to economic hardship, concern with increased levels of immigration and the lack of political representation. Adding to these explanations, this project turns to history and historical memory to understand variations in support for the populist right. The focus is on the long-term effect of historical violence experienced during the Second World War in Germany.Theoretically, the effect of historical violence is indeterminate. On the one hand, violence has been linked to increasing hostility towards outsiders and right-wing support. In sharp contrast to this first literature, violence has also been shown to lead to higher levels of pro-social behavior and inclusionary attitudes among the victimized. Studying the case of Germany by means of an multi-generation survey, the project will allow to investigate the role of family victimization for political preference formation in unprecedented detail.To guide the analysis, a model of intergenerational and institutional historical belief updating will be developed. Experiences are theorized to influence political preferences via either vertical or horizontal transmission. In vertical transmission, experiences or social-norms made/held by the parent-generation are passed on to children. In horizontal transmission, collective experiences of violence are received and re-elaborated by the wider institutional environment. A Bayesian updating model will be used to summarize the model.In order to test the model empirically, the project will exploit regional variation in the exposure to violence during the Second World War. Variation primarily stems from two sources. For one, direct experiences of violence were common among communities that became the target of air raids or lay in the way of ground attacks. For another, experiences of violence were differentially ‘imported’ by expellees from the former German Eastern regions. The project will compare voting behavior and political attitudes in areas with high and low prevalence of historical victimization.At the core of the research project is a nationally representative survey. The survey will follow a multi-generational design, where members of the same family are asked the same set of questions. Topics will include wartime experiences, political behavior, channels of transmission. The survey will also include two novel survey experiments that serve to test the theoretical model. A particularly stark case of regional variation in exposure to violence is the partial conquest of Saxony. This case will be studied with a mixed-methods approach combining survey data with in-depth interviews in the region.The project will enlarge our understanding of the role of historical memory on political behavior, and will create a first-of-its-kind micro-level dataset dedicated to investigating this relationship.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants