Individual and Contextual Influences of War on Ethnic Prejudice in Croatia

Strabac, Zan; Ringdal, Kristen

doi:10.1111/j.1533-8525.2008.00135.x

Cited by 20 publications

(27 citation statements)

References 39 publications

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“…In Kosovo, war experiences seem to have reduced the trust individuals have in the people in their neighbourhoods (Kijewski and Freitag 2018). Strabac and Ringdal (2008) demonstrated that, while indirect war experiences increased ethnic prejudice in Croatia, direct war experiences did not. Sandovici and Listhaug (2012) found that in Bosnia and Herzegovina direct experiences reduced optimism while indirect experiences increased it.…”

Section: Voters' War Experiences: Combatants Civilians and War Traumamentioning

confidence: 98%

“…A more fruitful approach has been used in the studies on the consequences of the wars in former Yugoslavia, as well as the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians. Here, scholars have usually distinguished veterans from civilians by whether they actually fought in the wars (Massey, Hodson, and Sekulic 2003;Sandovici and Listhaug 2012;Strabac and Ringdal 2008), with some also employing information about the duration of soldiers' service in a combat zone (Grossman et al 2015).…”

Section: Voters' War Experiences: Combatants Civilians and War Traumamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Moreover, they included a separate measure for having been in personal danger during the war, which created a conceptual overlap between their independent variables. In this line of research, arguably only Sandovici and Listhaug (2012) and Strabac and Ringdal (2008) have appropriately distinguished between war events experienced personally and events experienced by someone close to the respondent. Both studies concluded that direct and indirect experiences of war can have different political ramifications (of which more below).…”

Section: Voters' War Experiences: Combatants Civilians and War Traumamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In studies focusing on the wars in former Yugoslavia, studies found no difference between veterans and non-veterans. Support for ethnic nationalism and liberalism (Massey, Hodson, and Sekulic 2003), ethnic prejudice (Strabac and Ringdal 2008), and optimism about the future do not seem to depend of having fought in the wars (Sandovici and Listhaug 2012).…”

Section: Voters' War Experiences: Combatants Civilians and War Traumamentioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations

Modelling the Legacies of War Violence: Voters, Parties, Communities

Glaurdić

Lesschaeve

Mochťak

2019

AHPD

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wars are extreme events with profound social consequences. political science, however, has a limited grasp of their impact on the nature and content of political competition which follows in their wake. that is partly the case due to a lack of conceptual clarity when it comes to capturing the effects of war with reliable data. this article systematises and evaluates the attempts at modelling the consequences of war in political science research which relies on quantitative methods. our discussion is organised around three levels of analysis: individual level of voters, institutional level of political parties, and the aggregate level of communities. we devote particular attention to modelling the legacies of the most recent wars in southeast europe, and we offer our view of which efforts have the best potential to help set the foundations of a promising research programme.

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Section: Voters' War Experiences: Combatants Civilians and War Traumamentioning

confidence: 98%

Section: Voters' War Experiences: Combatants Civilians and War Traumamentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Voters' War Experiences: Combatants Civilians and War Traumamentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Voters' War Experiences: Combatants Civilians and War Traumamentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Modelling the Legacies of War Violence: Voters, Parties, Communities

Glaurdić

Lesschaeve

Mochťak

2019

AHPD

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“…Simply put, wars change societies. They are also likely to change voters' expectations of what the government should do and their outlook on the social world around them (Strabac and Ringdal, 2008;Hutchison, 2014). Wars also change the real needs of the population -needs that can most often be satisfied only by governmental action.…”

Section: Subnational Elections and Voters' Preferences: Fiscally Libementioning

confidence: 99%

Post-war voters as fiscal liberals: local elections, spending, and war trauma in contemporary Croatia

Glaurdić

Vuković

2018

East European Politics

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Postwar Voters as Fiscal Liberals: Local Elections, Spending, and War Trauma in Contemporary Croatia This study exposes postwar voters' fiscal liberalism using individual-level and aggregate-level data covering a decade and a half of local electoral competition in postwar Croatia. Aggregate-level analysis shows Croatian voters' fiscal liberalism to be conditional on their communities' exposure to war violence: greater exposure to violence leads to greater support for fiscally expansionist incumbents. Individual-level analysis, on the other hand, shows postwar voters' fiscal liberalism as rooted in their different levels of war-related trauma: more feelings of war-related trauma lead to greater economic expectations from the government. Our analysis also shows that voters' warconditioned preferences for fiscally expansionist incumbents show little sign of abating over time-a testament to the challenge presented by postwar recovery, and to the impact war exerts on political life long after the bloodshed has ended. Public choice literature is divided when it comes to one important question: are voters fiscally liberal or fiscally conservative? In this study, we do not provide a comprehensive answer to this still unresolved puzzle which forms the foundation of a vast body of work in the political economy of voter choice. We do, however, offer a theoretically and empirically informed answer which we hold is valid in the context of postwar societies. We argue that individuals and communities exposed to war violence are fiscally liberal, as they seek economic security and fiscal activism from the government. Incumbents who provide that security, most notably in the form of fiscal expansion, get rewarded at the polls. In post-conflict contexts, this dynamic likely gets further compounded by the fact that war-affected communities also have greater needs for governmental intervention, with the challenges of reconstruction often out of reach of private initiatives. The consequences of this relationship between incumbents and voters in postwar polities could be toxic. In the environment of weak institutions and safeguards against corruption, a system which electorally rewards fiscal expansion could be particularly prone to clientelism. Postwar polities could be set down the path of political populism for years to come after the violence ends-a dynamic which has potentially dangerous repercussions not only for postwar economic recovery, but also for the health of postwar democracy. This article offers a step toward improving our understanding of the political economy of elections and voter choice in postwar societies through the study of four cycles of local electoral competition in Croatia, the EU member state with the most recent experience of war on its soil. The 1991-1995 Croatian war for independence may have had less media coverage compared with the war in neighbouring Bosnia-Herzegovina, but it had a tremendously destructive impact on Croatian society. Direct war damages were estimated at $50-80 billion, with an additi...

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Inter‐group forgiveness in the aftermath of symmetric and asymmetric communal violence: Contact density and nationalistic climates as contextual mediators

Penić

Elcheroth

Morselli

2017

Euro J Social Psych

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In this study, we examine how communal exposure to war violence is related to the inhabitants' forgiveness. Based on multilevel analyses of representative survey data collected in the post‐war former Yugoslavia (N = 18 351), we show that forgiveness depends on the type of communal violence: It is lowest in communities exposed to asymmetric and strongest in communities exposed to symmetric violence. We further show the mediating role of the inter‐ethnic bonds and nationalistic climates in the communities: while asymmetric violence breaks local inter‐ethnic bonds and fuels norms of unconditional nationalism, in communities exposed to symmetric violence, inter‐ethnic contact is preserved, and nationalism rejected, more strongly than elsewhere. Our findings thus show that individuals' reconciliatory attitudes depend on the social context in which they are embedded; in particular, on the type of violence that affected their community and on the resulting communal climate that fosters or inhibits inter‐ethnic contact and exclusionary identities.

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Individual and Contextual Influences of War on Ethnic Prejudice in Croatia

Cited by 20 publications

References 39 publications

Modelling the Legacies of War Violence: Voters, Parties, Communities

Modelling the Legacies of War Violence: Voters, Parties, Communities

Post-war voters as fiscal liberals: local elections, spending, and war trauma in contemporary Croatia

Inter‐group forgiveness in the aftermath of symmetric and asymmetric communal violence: Contact density and nationalistic climates as contextual mediators

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