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 ...

If public opinion about foreign policy is such an elite-driven process, why does the public often disagree with what elites have to say? We argue here that elite cue-taking models in International Relations are both overly pessimistic and unnecessarily restrictive. Members of the public may lack information about the world around them, but they do not lack principles, and information need not only cascade from the top down. We present the results from five survey experiments where we show that cues from social peers are at least as strong as those from political elites. Our theory and results build on a growing number of findings that individuals are embedded in a social context that combines with their general orientations toward foreign policy in shaping responses toward the world around them. Thus, we suggest the public is perhaps better equipped for espousing judgments in foreign affairs than many of our top-down models claim. . Thanks to Kyle Dropp for his assistance with fielding Experiments 1-2. Kertzer acknowledges the support of the Niehaus Center for Globalization and Governance. series of polls found that Democrats and Republicans in the public were divided. In a Pew poll conducted July 24-27, 60% of Republicans blamed Hamas for the violence, whereas Democrats were split, with 29% blaming Hamas, and 26% blaming Israel. A Gallup poll conducted July 22-23 detected a similar pattern: 65% of Republicans thought Israel's actions were justified, but Democrats were divided, as 31% backed the Israeli response, and 47% called it unjustified. This pattern-where political elites are united but the public is divided-is particularly interesting for political scientists because it violates the assumptions of a commonly held theory about public opinion, in which the public knows relatively little about foreign affairs and thus structures its beliefs by taking cues from trusted, partisan elites-a top-down process in which members of the public adeptly swallow whatever their preferred elite cue-givers feed them. Yet if the mass public knows so little and can only regurgitate carefully pureed talking points, why does it often disagree with what elites have to say? We argue here that partisan elite

Social media increasingly plays a role in conflict and contentious politics. Politicians, leaders, insurgents, and protestors all have used it as a tool for communication. At the same time, scholars have turned to social media as a source of new data on conflict. I provide a framework for understanding social media's influence on conflict through four interrelated points: (1) social media reduces the costs of communication, (2) it increases the speed and dissemination of information, (3) scholars should focus on the strategic interaction and competitive adaption of actors in response to communication technology changes, and (4) the new data that social media provides are not only an important resource, but also fundamentally change the information available to conflict actors, thereby shaping the conflict itself. In sum, social media's influence on conflict defies simplistic explanations that argue that it privileges incumbents or challengers.

Disease epidemics and outbreaks often generate conspiracy theories and misperceptions that mislead people about the risks they face and how best to protect themselves. We investigate the effectiveness of interventions aimed at combating false and unsupported information about the Zika epidemic and subsequent yellow fever outbreak in Brazil. Results from a nationally representative survey show that conspiracy theories and other misperceptions about Zika are widely believed. Moreover, results from three preregistered survey experiments suggest that efforts to counter misperceptions about diseases during epidemics and outbreaks may not always be effective. We find that corrective information not only fails to reduce targeted Zika misperceptions but also reduces the accuracy of other beliefs about the disease. In addition, although corrective information about the better-known threat from yellow fever was more effective, none of these corrections affected support for vector control policies or intentions to engage in preventive behavior.

The emergence of social media has led scholars to focus on its effects on mass behavior and protest. A key understudied question is what explains the variation in the adoption and use of social media by world leaders? Social media, and in particular Twitter and Facebook, have emerged as important, new channels for political communication. By the end of 2014, over 76% of world leaders had an active presence on social media platforms, which are being used to communicate with domestic and international audiences. We look at several different potential hypotheses that explain adoption of social media by world leaders including: modernization, social pressure, level of democratization, and diffusion. We find strong support for two explanations-increased political pressure from social unrest and higher levels of democratization both increase the likelihood of leaders adopting social media. Taken together, these findings show how institutional and political pressures shape political communication and leader behavior.

I examine how anger stemming from violence in the Israel-Palestine conflict influences intragroup retaliation.In July 2010 I conducted a series of experiments in two cities in the Southern District of Israel affected to varying degrees (high and low) by rocket fire from the Gaza Strip. For each experiment, subjects were partnered anonymously with a member of their community. They were then exposed to one of two emotional manipulations: one that induced anger or one that did not. Finally, each subject was given an opportunity to keep an endowment or allocate it towards destroying a portion, or all, of their partner's income ("pay to punish") in retaliation for their partner having taken money from them previously. This decision to "pay to punish" was designed to closely mimic the costly nature of conflict. The findings suggest that anger has a conditional effect on decisions to pay to punish: in Sderot (most affected by rocket fire), anger decreases punishment, while in Ofakim (less affected), it increases punishment. Additionally, higher exposure to violence made subjects more likely to engage in negative reciprocity. KEY WORDS: emotions, intragroup conflict, behavioral game theory * I would like to thank

How does exposure to criminal violence shape attitudes towards justice and the rule of law? Citizens care about crime prevention and procedural legality, yet they also value punishing perpetrators for the harm they have done. We argue that anger induced by exposure to criminal violence increases the demand for retribution and harsh punishments, even at the expense of the rule of law. We test this theory using one observational and two experimental studies from an original survey of 1,200 individuals in Western Mexico, a region affected by organized criminal violence and vigilantism. First, we first show that exposure to violence is correlated with increased anger and support for punitive justice, including vigilante actions. Second, across our two experiments, we show that citizens are more supportive of harsh punishments and place less value on their legality in response to morally outrageous crimes. Third, we find that the innocence of the victim, rather than the severity of the crime, is what triggers outrage and punitiveness. This suggests that citizens may support extreme levels of violence as long as they perceive that its targets are criminals. Finally, we show that outrageous forms of violence against civilians can lead individuals to prioritize harsh punishment regardless of its legality. When criminal actors target perceived innocents with common crimes like extortion, there is greater support for harsh, vigilante action. These patterns provide a bottom-up explanation for harsh justice.

Misperceptions and conspiracy theories about foreign powers and religious and ethnic groups can inflame intergroup conflict and distort public opinion, especially in divided and contentious regions like the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). Why do people acquire and maintain these false or unsupported beliefs? This study reports the results of a novel survey experiment examining conspiracy beliefs in the MENA region. We find that belief in conspiracy theories about the West, Jews, and Israel is widespread and strongly associated with generalized anti-Western and anti-Jewish attitudes, especially among individuals with high political knowledge. However, both experimental and observational data indicate that these beliefs do not appear to be the result of feelings of powerlessness-our findings provide little support for the hypothesis that a lack of control makes people more vulnerable to conspiracy theories.