Historical Roots of Democratic Support

Session Submission Type: Full Paper Panel

Session Description

What are the historical roots underlying support for democracy? And which forces from the past might emerge to challenge democratic institutions? A growing body of evidence suggests that economic and political history matter for the state of current democracies. This panel looks at factors from history that shape contemporary attitudes towards democratic politics. Our case studies include the effect of the Armenian genocide on participation in anti-regime protests; of male-biased mass violence in Cambodia on the political representation of women; of population resettlement in Poland on participation in pro-democracy protest; and of lynchings on voter suppression and intimidation in the U.S.

First, we ask whether the legacy of genocide can help explain participation in anti-regime protests. We study the case of Armenia, where large parts of the population descend from survivors of genocide, and which recently has seen mass protests that led to the removal of the incumbent president. We demonstrate that individuals that 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 following the velvet revolution. 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 attitudes with the rest of the population, they show deeper political knowledge, greater political interest, and consider politics as more important for their private lives.

Second, we ask: does community diversity affect organized protest against a predatory regime? From a theoretical perspective, the effect of diversity is ambivalent. On the one hand, community diversity reduces the capacity for collective action, including the capacity to organize and coordinate protest. On the other hand, diversity is also associated with lower levels of informal cooperation and local public goods provision, exacerbating hardships and increasing the incentive to mobilize. What, then, is the net effect of diversity on protest? To address this question, we draw on evidence from communist Poland. We measure cultural diversity using post-WWII population transfers. We measure organized protest using granular, untapped data on Solidarność uprisings in 1980—1986. Preliminary results suggest that community diversity increased organized protest against communist regime.

Third, we ask what is the legacy of male-biased mass violence on the political representation of women? Societal transformations that afford women economic autonomy can improve women’s representation in political office. In this paper, we examine the effects of a watershed societal transformation: the Khmer Rouge genocide in Cambodia, during which 50% to 70% of the country’s working-age men were killed. Using an original dataset on economic and political conditions in Cambodian communes, we find that exposure to the genocide is positively associated with women’s economic advancement and, in turn, present day indicators of women’s representation in local-level elected office. We supplement our quantitative analyses with original, in-depth ethnographic interviews with genocide survivors. A crucial finding emerges: Where women obtained control over household finances and economic responsibilities, they gained a clearer stake in the policy decisions of the state, and found greater incentives to become politically engaged.

Fourth, we ask what is the political legacy of violent, oppressive, or authoritarian state institutions, particularly after the demise of those institutions through democratization? To answer this question, we leverage historical data on the locations of lynchings in the U.S. South and West, county-level demographic data from the seventh decennial Census of the United States (from 1850), and geo-coded microdata on contemporary political attitudes and behaviors. We illustrate that living closer to the location of a late 19th or early 20th century lynching in 2016 is a strongly significant predictor of having experienced a problem voting or feeling intimidated while trying to vote in the 2016 election, and this relationship is even stronger for Black survey respondents. This relationship is invariant to the inclusion of a variety of individual demographic characteristics and historical characteristics of the respondent's county.

Together, the papers on the panel provide new insights into the ways historical events shape attitudes and political behavior that work both to support and to undermine the well-functioning of contemporary democracies.

Sub Unit

• Division 6: Political Economy

Individual Presentations

• Genocide and the Importance of Politics: Explaining Protest Behavior in Armenia - Max Schaub, University of Hamburg; Rustamdjan Hakimov, University of Lausanne

• Community Diversity and Organized Protest in Communist Poland - Krzysztof Krakowski, Collegio Carlo Alberto

• Genocide and the Gender Gap in Political Representation - Nikhar Gaikwad, Columbia University; Erin Lin, Ohio State University; Noah Zucker, Columbia University

• The Legacy of Lynching - Rebecca Goldstein, University of California, Berkeley; Mayya Komisarchik, University of Rochester

Chair

• Alexandra Cirone Cornell University

Discussant

• Volha Charnysh Massachusetts Institute of Technology