The Consequences of Banning Political Ideologies: Evidence from Germany (Pre-Recorded)

• In Event: Political Information and Political Engagement

Abstract

How can states counter ideologies that they deem anti-democratic? We answer this question by studying the effect of the German Anti-Radical Decree. Implemented in 1972, this policy allowed individuals with connections to extremist groups to be banned from working in the public sector. We argue that this policy might have backfired, increasing extremist behavior and reducing voting for the incumbent.
To test this claim, we have built an original dataset of individuals targeted by the bans, which we merge with official electoral data to see how these persecutions affected subsequent voting behavior in their municipalities. Building upon a newly collected dataset of protest actions in Germany across a time span of over 50 years, we also test whether the bans increased protest activities.
Causal identification will come from leveraging the fact that most individuals banned under this policy were teachers. Given that most bans took place when individuals first ran for a job, we will exploit as-good-as-random variation in the allocation of Post-War expellees as an instrument for the bans. The rationale is that incoming expellees increase the schooling needs of the municipality, which increases the number of job openings for teachers. This, in turn, increased the probability that some of them would end up being banned on the grounds of links to extremist organizations.
Our findings have implications for the repertoire of policies that states can implement to deter ideologies that they regard as threatening to democracy.

Authors

• Daniel Bischof, University of Zurich

• Vicente Valentim, Nuffield College, University of Oxford