Long-Term Social and Political Consequences of World War I and II

Session Submission Type: Virtual Full Paper Panel

Session Description

Large-scale wars can fundamentally reshape the social and political landscape. A growing number of studies in political science and economics have investigated the impacts of wars on social cohesion, political engagement and trust and cooperative norms. Most of this research focuses on contemporary wars and hence faces endogeneity issues. Moreover, most of these studies rely on self-reported survey data which are often subject to social desirability bias. Our panel brings together four papers that take a historical perspective by focusing on the long-term consequences of World War I and II. The papers in our panel rely on a multitude of historical sources including war casualty figures, administrative data, election results, crime and health data that present a diverse universe of outcomes.

Haass and colleagues demonstrate how higher shares in victim numbers from WWI in German communities have increased right-wing support for the NSDAP by employing a two-pronged mobilization strategy for veterans of WWI and non-veterans.

Folsz, Morgan-Collins and Theuerkauf assemble a microlevel dataset and show that geographical variation of sexual violence in occupied post-WWII Germany can be explained by different levels of economic inequality and employment structure.

Menon investigates the effect of the influx of ethnic German refugees from former eastern European countries into German communities and their effect on right-wing voting through shared culture mechanism over a 100-year period.

Charnysh and Schaub focus on the effect of intra-German migration towards the end of WWII. They show that migration led to religious diversification in communities and that this process ultimately contributed to higher levels of liberal values including gender norms, tolerance towards migrants and economic policies.

Sub Unit

• Division 21: Conflict Processes

Individual Presentations

• Trenches of Totalitarianism: World War I and the Rise of Fascism - Felix Haass, University of Oslo; Alexander De Juan, Osnabrück University; Carlo Koos, University of Bergen; Thomas Tichelbaecker, Princeton University; Sascha Riaz, Harvard University

• Explaining Mass Rape in Post-War Germany - Mona Morgan-Collins, King's College London; Ulrike Gisela Theuerkauf, University of East Anglia; Hanna Folsz, Stanford University

• Refugees and the Radical Right - Evidence from Post-WWII Forced Migrations - Anil Menon, University of Michigan

• Migration and Social Change: Evidence from Post-WWII Displacement in Germany - Volha Charnysh, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Chair

• Yuri M. Zhukov University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

Discussant

• Carlo Koos University of Bergen