Do Transitional Justice Museums Persuade Visitors? Evidence from a Field Experiment

Balcells, Laia; Palanza, Valeria; Voytas, Elsa

doi:10.1086/714765

Cited by 24 publications

(18 citation statements)

References 38 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…More broadly, our study highlights variation in how authoritarian pasts are seen and how they cast shadows over new democracies. Policies under dictatorships are often revisited and reassessed through a transitional justice process after democratization (Capoccia and Pop‐Eleches 2020; Nalepa 2010; Park and Hong 2021), and this process affects citizens’ attitudes toward the authoritarian regime and toward democratic values (Balcells, Palanza, and Voytas 2022; Dinas and Northmore‐Ball 2020; Nalepa 2012). However, the implementation of transitional justice is not always straightforward (Kaminski, Nalepa, and O'Neill 2006; Nalepa 2010).…”

Section: Rural Development Program and Electionmentioning

confidence: 99%

In Strongman We Trust: The Political Legacy of the New Village Movement in South Korea

Hong

Park

Yang

2022

American J Political Sci

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This study explores how authoritarian distributive policies may not only generate political support for the autocrat but may also help sustain powerful and lasting authoritarian legacies. We use microlevel data from South Korea's New Village Movement, a 1970s rural development program implemented under dictator Park Chung‐hee and widely touted as contributing to the country's rapid economic development. Our analysis shows that townships in receipt of larger cash transfers cast more votes for Park's incumbent party in the subsequent election. More importantly, we show that the effects of the subsidies still appeared almost four decades later in 2012, when the dictator's daughter was democratically elected as the president of South Korea. We show that these effects were not driven by villagers’ long‐term income gains or enhanced social capital due to the program but by the unwavering support of the beneficiary villagers for the dictator, whose legacy remained strong long after democratization.

show abstract

Section: Rural Development Program and Electionmentioning

confidence: 99%

In Strongman We Trust: The Political Legacy of the New Village Movement in South Korea

Hong

Park

Yang

2022

American J Political Sci

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The regime after winning the war granted an amnesty to all sides, and prevented any truth and reconciliation, let alone transitional justice, that might have helped grieving families heal from the trauma. Countries with credible truth commissions or transitional justice processes, on the other hand, might succeed in healing the wounds of war and thus avoid the long-term historical legacies of political violence (Zvobgo, 2020; Balcells, Palanza & Voytas, 2022).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ghosts of the Black Decade: How legacies of violence shaped Algeria’s Hirak protests

Kilavuz

Grewal

Kubinec

2023

Journal of Peace Research

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Episodes of mass political violence, such as genocide and civil war, have been thought to both encourage and discourage future political mobilization. We square these competing hypotheses by disaggregating between protest onset and resilience. We argue that exposure to mass violence decades ago should on average decrease protest onset, by heightening fears of repression and retribution. However, conditional on protesting, prior exposure to violence should increase protest longevity, by generating greater political grievances that fuel commitment to the cause. We find evidence of both effects in Algeria during the 2019–20 Hirak protests that toppled President Abdelaziz Bouteflika. Pairing an original dataset on massacres during the 1990s civil war with a rolling online survey of 18,000 Algerians in 2019–20, we find that areas exposed to greater violence in the 1990s had on average fewer, but more committed, protesters in 2019–20.

show abstract

“…Prior work has found that memorials and other transitional justice policies have a therapeutic effect in post-conflict societies (Long and Brecke, 2003;Staub, 2000). Acknowledging atrocities committed during a conflict can foster tolerance and empathy toward victims (Balcells, Palanza and Voytas, 2022;Cilliers, Dube and Siddiqi, 2016;Kaufman, 2006). Memorials have also been shown to trigger a sense of guilt among individuals associated with the perpetrator, and create incentives to break with the xenophobic attitudes of the perpetrators (Young, 1994).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Prior work has focused mainly on different transitional justice measures and more immediate effects on political and social attitudes (Balcells, Palanza and Voytas, 2022;Cilliers, Dube and Siddiqi, 2016). In many ways, however, voting seems the most relevant outcome to analyze.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Holocaust Memorials Reduce Xenophobic Voting

Hager¹,

Pereira²

2023

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Do Holocaust memorials lead voters away from far-right, xenophobic parties? Memory policies are motivated by the belief that acknowledging atrocities can foster tolerance. However, existing evidence is contradictory, and the effects of exposure to memorials on political behavior remain an open question. We study this question in the context of the gradual implementation of stumbling blocks---the world's largest decentralized memorial honoring Holocaust victims with personalized brass plates outside their last known homes. We collect the geolocation of all stumbling blocks installed across the city of Berlin, and combine it with fine-grained election data over seven elections. Difference-in-differences models show that the Holocaust memorials lead to a decrease in support for the far-right and explicitly xenophobic party Alternative for Germany. Effect sizes are particularly large when memorials also inform about the execution of a victim, pointing to grief as a likely causal mechanism. The evidence suggests that memorials can successfully engender tolerance, reducing the vote share of far-right parties.

show abstract

Do Transitional Justice Museums Persuade Visitors? Evidence from a Field Experiment

Cited by 24 publications

References 38 publications

In Strongman We Trust: The Political Legacy of the New Village Movement in South Korea

In Strongman We Trust: The Political Legacy of the New Village Movement in South Korea

Ghosts of the Black Decade: How legacies of violence shaped Algeria’s Hirak protests

Holocaust Memorials Reduce Xenophobic Voting

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About