The Impact of a Museum Exhibit on Post-conflict Views in Northern Ireland

• In Event: Reconciliation in the Aftermath of Violent Conflict

Abstract

Can museums influence the way visitors think about past violence and modern-day politics? Does commemoration in the form of a museum exhibit promote tolerance, or heighten the salience of societal cleavages? Although the impacts of symbolic transitional justice policies such as museums have largely been overlooked, we hypothesize that museums can shape 1) perceptions of groups involved in violence; and 2) preferences toward public policies to address the past. In cases where museums recount multi-sided violence, reconstructing the conflict can be a difficult and complex undertaking. In these settings, if museums are a reminder of past discord or are perceived as biased, they might reinforce prior beliefs and heighten societal divisions.

To test our expectations, in May 2022, we conducted a field experiment at the Ulster Museum in Belfast, Northern Ireland, where sectarian violence during the Troubles (1968-1998) periodically erupted between largely Catholic republicans and predominantly Protestant unionists. We randomly assigned a sample of university students to visit one of two exhibits in the same museum: a treatment exhibit (Troubles and Beyond, recounting the Troubles-era violence) or a placebo exhibit (Elements, a natural science exhibit about the periodic elements). After visiting, we asked students to respond to a questionnaire about their perceptions of the violence, their trust in political institutions and transitional justice preferences, and their support for the Good Friday peace agreement and reunification with Ireland. We measure visitors’ attitudinal shifts, and gauge persistence of the effects for the following six months through follow-up surveys. We complement the results from the field experiment with a survey experiment embedded in a regionally-representative survey in Northern Ireland. Our results suggest that while symbolic TJ policies have little effect on attitudes in post-civil war settings, they might polarize some social groups along the master cleavage of the conflict.

Authors

• Laia Balcells, Georgetown University

• Elsa Voytas, Dartmouth College