Identity and Attitudes in Times of Political Upheaval

Session Submission Type: Full Paper Panel

Session Description

This panel brings together four papers that take advantage of the opportunity provided by the 2014 revolution in Ukraine and the ensuing Russia-Ukraine war to study how political upheaval can influence attitudes and, arguably even more fundamentally, identity. Among countries in conflict, Ukraine offers researchers the ability to conduct high-quality surveys, an opportunity that each of our panelists exploit with innovative empirical designs involving randomized control experiments or panel data that achieve strong identification. The papers to be presented by Alexseev and Hale employ priming experiments designed to ascertain the impact of conflict on attitudes to democracy and identity, though their primary interest is in heterogenous effects: Alexseev argues that people with indirect and direct exposure to violence will respond differently to the treatment, while Hale and his coauthors expect to find that people whose networks include emigrants will display more identity flexibility, being more likely to alter their ethnic identity self-presentation when primed about the war. The paper to be presented by Kulyk takes a different experimental approach, randomizing the assignment of interviewers in a nationally representative survey by ethnicity, testing the degree to which individuals in a time of ethnically charged conflict alter how they report their own identity and their views. A major implication is that apparent links in survey data between ethnic identity and attitudes may actually reflect an omitted variable, the ethnicity of the interviewer, meaning that ethnicity may be much less potent shaper of attitudes than sometimes thought. Finally, the paper to be presented by Pop-Eleches and Robertson deploys rare panel data spanning a revolution and war, enabling them to analyze patterns in who specifically changed their identity self-presentation and attitudes during this period. They find high levels of stability in ethnic identity, though changes in attachment to the state. Discussing the paper will be Kyle Marquardt, an outstanding methodologist and specialist on identity and political behavior, and chairing will be Regina Smyth, herself a leading authority on political behavior. It also bears noting that Olga Onuch and Gwendolyn Sasse are also coauthors of two of the papers, but will not be presenting (Onuch because she is presenting on another panel, and Sasse because she does not anticipate being able to attend).

Sub Unit

• Related Groups / Association for the Study of Nationalities

Individual Presentations

• Vote, We Will Provide the Fire Cover:" Ukraine’s Democracy in the Face of War - Mikhail A. Alexseev, San Diego State University

• Migration, Networks, and Identity Change in Conflict - Henry E. Hale, George Washington University; Volodymyr Kulyk, Institute of Political and Ethnic Studies, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine; Olga Onuch, University of Manchester

• Situational Ethnic Identity, Attitudes, and Political Violence - Volodymyr Kulyk, Institute of Political and Ethnic Studies, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine; Henry E. Hale, George Washington University; Olga Onuch, University of Manchester

• Conflict, Identity and Language in Post-Revolutionary Ukraine - Grigore Pop-Eleches, Princeton University; Graeme Robertson

Chair

• Regina A. Smyth Indiana University

Discussant

• Kyle L. Marquardt University of Bergen