How does the threat of becoming a victim of terrorism affect voting behavior? Localities in southern Israel have been exposed to rocket attacks from the Gaza strip since 2001. Relying on variation across time and space in the range of rockets, we identify the effect of this threat on voting in Israeli elections. We first show that the evolution of the rockets' range leads to exogenous variation in the threat of terrorism. We then compare voting in national elections within and outside the rockets' range. Our results suggest that the right-wing parties' vote-share are 2 to 6 percentage points higher in localities that are within the range-a substantively significant effect. Unlike previous studies that explore the role of actual exposure to terrorism on political preferences and behavior, we show that the mere threat of an attack affects voting.How does the threat of becoming a victim of terrorism affect voting behavior? Are voters more likely to support parties that favor extending greater concessions to terrorists in order to avoid further violence, or are they more likely to vote for parties that oppose concessions, and that favor more aggressive policy towards the perpetrators? These questions have direct implications for conflict resolution, as well as for understanding and assessing the effectiveness of terrorism as a political tool. The existing literature that focuses primarily on the actual exposure to terrorism has been mixed, with some studies suggesting that terrorism leads voters to be more accommodating of terrorists' demands, and others showing a hardening of attitudes (a rightward shift) in the electorate.Our study improves on the existing studies in several ways. We explore the effect of a particular method of terrorism-being in the range of rocket fire. In the context of the * agetmansky@idc.ac.il, Lauder School of Government, Diplomacy, and Strategy, Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya.† zeitzoff@gmail.com, Niehaus Center for Globalization and Governance, Princeton University. 1Israeli-Palestinian conflict, rockets' launchers are confined to the Gaza strip, and therefore the effect of rockets depends on the maximum distance that these rockets can travel from Gaza. We show that the rockets' range is exogenous to the Israeli political circumstances, and is determined by the availability of rocket technology and launching expertise in Gaza.This allows us to assess the effect of rockets' threat on voting. Specifically, we explore the variation in the range of rockets from 2001 through 2009, and show that voters who reside in the range are more likely to vote for right-wing parties. We estimate that the effect of being in the rockets' range is an increase of 2 to 6 percentage points in the right-wing vote-share, and this implies additional 2 to 7 seats in the Israeli Knesset (parliament) out of 120 for the right-wing bloc, if all voters in Israel were within the rockets' range. 1 fWe also unpack changes in different subsets of the right-wing bloc, as well as changes in vote-shares of specific ...

A growing number of states are erecting physical barriers along their borders to stem the illicit flow of goods and people. Though border fortification policies are both controversial and politically salient, their distributional consequences remain largely unexplored. We study the impact of a border wall project on smuggling in Israel. We use the initial phase of the wall construction to causally estimate spillover effects on cross-border smuggling, especially vehicle theft. We find a large decrease in smuggling of stolen vehicles in protected towns and a similar substantial increase in not-yet-protected towns. For some protected towns, fortification also arbitrarily increased the length of smuggling routes. These township-level shocks further deterred smuggling (6% per kilometer). Our findings suggest that border fortification may have uneven distributional consequences, creating unintended winners and losers.

What factors influence attitudes towards refugees? Do negative attitudes towards refugees also influence attitudes towards conflict in the host countries? Previous studies suggest that an influx of refugees, and locals' reaction to them, may destabilize receiving countries and lead to conflict. In particular, actual or perceived negative effects of refugees' presence, such as increased economic competition with the locals, disruption of ethnic balance in the host country, and arrival of people with ties to rebel groups may lead to an increased likelihood of civil conflict in countries that receive refugees. These effects can lead to instability by changing the locals' incentives and opportunities of engaging in violence. Indeed, some studies find a positive correlation at the crossnational level between influx of refugees and conflict in receiving countries. We contribute to this literature by experimentally manipulating information about the externalities of hosting refugees. We conducted a survey-experiment in the summer of 2014 in Turkey, a country that hosts the largest number of Syrian refugees. We examine how different messages about the possible effects of hosting refugees-increased economic burden, disruption of ethnic balance, ties with rebels, as well as a positive message of saving innocent women and children-affect locals' perceptions of the refugees and their attitudes towards the Turkish-Kurdish peace process. We find that some messages cause locals, especially majority non-Kurds, to hold more negative views of the refugees, and in some cases to view them as a threat. Yet on the whole, this information does not affect support for the peace process within Turkey. Rather, fundamental factors, such as partisanship, and previous exposure to conflict are better predictors of attitudes towards peace.

Does war affect support for incumbent leaders and parties? The literature is divided with studies reporting negative, positive, or null-effects. Many studies analyze the consequences of foreign intervention, and less is known about the political costs of wars fought close to home. Building on theories of retrospective voting, we theorize that wars inform voters about leader’s competence, and in turn affect mass attitudes and behaviors. Leveraging the unexpected onset of the 1973 Yom Kippur war which interrupted an ongoing Israeli public opinion poll, and voting records from four national elections linked with Israeli military fatality data, we demonstrate that despite the ultimate military victory, the war and its casualties reduced support for incumbent parties and leaders, and increased support for the opposition. By moving beyond foreign interventions, we provide strong evidence that wars over a country’s core territory can be politically costly for incumbent leaders and parties.

What explains citizens’ willingness to fight for their country in times of war? Using six waves of the World Values Survey, this study finds that individual willingness to fight is negatively related with country-level income inequality. When income inequality is high, the rich are less willing to fight than the poor. When inequality is low, the poor and rich differ little in their willingness to fight. This change in the willingness to fight between low and high inequality countries is greater among the rich than among the poor. This article explores several explanations for these findings. The data are consistent with the argument that high inequality makes it more attractive for the rich to buy themselves out of military service.