Genocide and the Importance of Politics: Explaining Protest Behavior in Armenia

• In Event: Historical Roots of Democratic Support

Abstract

Can memories of mass violence explain participation in revolutionary protest? We study the case of Armenia, where large parts of the population descend from survivors of genocide, and which recently saw mass protests that led to the removal of the incumbent president. We bring to bear an original, nationally representative dataset (n=2,637) collected between the mass protests and the first elections under the new government. Our data shows that individuals who count victims of the Armenian genocide among their family members were much more likely to protest, and are also more likely to have voted in the elections that followed the revolution. To avoid desirability bias we deploy an indirect measure of protest participation and use verified voting records from the national register to measure turnout. Our findings hold when we control for historical background characteristics and place-of-origin fixed effects, and when investigating behavior at the intensive margin: the more severe the historical victimization, the more likely individuals took part in the revolution. We then go on to explain the mechanism behind our finding. We theorize that memories of violence can make the larger forces of politics matter to individuals, thereby increasing political sophistication and spurring political action. Using causal mediation analysis, we provide empirical evidence for our theory. While individuals from victimized families share most political preferences with the rest of the population, they show deeper political knowledge, greater political interest, and consider politics as more important for their private lives. Besides adding a highly relevant case to the literature on the legacies of violence, our study therefore provides a new theoretical explanation for the puzzling link between political engagement and experiences of violence.

Authors

• Max Schaub, University of Hamburg

• Rustamdjan Hakimov, University of Lausanne