The Double Logic of Internal Purges: New Evidence from Francoist Spain

Balcells, Laia; Villamil, Francisco

doi:10.1080/13537113.2020.1795451

Cited by 8 publications

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“…In the 1930s, Catalonia achieved autonomy within Spain, with a regional parliament and a government, among other institutions of self-rule. However, during the Francoist dictatorship that followed the Spanish Civil War (1936War ( -1939, cultural rights for national minorities in Spain (i.e., Basques, Galicians, Catalans) were repressed, and Spanish nationalism was imposed by state institutions (Balcells & Villamil, 2020). Since the transition to democracy after 1975, national minorities regained some level of self-rule in a decentralized system that fell short of full federalism (Beramendi, 2012).…”

Section: The Case Of Contemporary Cataloniamentioning

confidence: 99%

Preferences in Between: Moderates in the Catalan Secessionist Conflict

Balcells

Kuo

2021

PaG

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Recent research on territorial preferences focuses on explaining who supports or opposes independence. However, this research overlooks the relevance of an “intermediate” category of citizens who may oppose the territorial status quo of a sub-state territory but not support independence. We use evidence from the critical case of Catalonia to illustrate the relevance of individuals with such preferences for policies and outcomes highly relevant to secessionist conflicts. We present four sets of findings using two-wave panel data from December 2017 (just prior to the December regional elections when Catalan independence was the most salient and contentious issue) and September 2018. First, we find that a sizable plurality within Catalonia supports greater autonomy short of independence; conventional sociodemographic variables explaining support for independence do not strongly account for this preference. Second, such pro-autonomy individuals have considerably more intermediate attitudes regarding the key “on the ground” actions that the Spanish and Catalan governments pursued during the crucial independence drive in 2017. They were more opposed than pro-independence individuals to the unilateral independence efforts, and more opposed than pro-status quo individuals to the Spanish government’s actions to counter these efforts. Third, they expressed emotions around the secessionist conflict similar to pro-status quo individuals. Finally, using an embedded survey experiment, we find that pro-autonomy individuals are more trusting of both the central and regional governments regarding their abiding by an agreement to resolve the conflict, and are less easily “polarized” through priming. Overall, these findings indicate the importance of further analyzing individuals with intermediate territorial views in secessionist conflicts.

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Section: The Case Of Contemporary Cataloniamentioning

confidence: 99%

Preferences in Between: Moderates in the Catalan Secessionist Conflict

Balcells

Kuo

2021

PaG

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“…Several authoritarian regimes have demographically targeted repression in a manner intended to eliminate higher income or educated segments of society. Franquist Spain purged public school teachers (Balcells and Villamil 2020) as did Mao Zedong's Anti-Rightist Campaign in China (Zeng and Eisenman 2018). Francisco Macias Nguema's rule of Equatorial Guinea included the closure of all private schools and the use of repression to support coerced labor (Fegley 1981).…”

Section: State Repression and Economic Developmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

State Terror and Long-Run Development: The Persistence of the Khmer Rouge

Grasse

2023

Am Polit Sci Rev

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Does mass repression have a long-term economic legacy, and if so, what explains persistence? I argue repression can undermine development by delimiting human capital. I study the aftermath of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. The regime implemented a campaign of violence to reorganize society, yet governing elites varied across the communist ideological spectrum. I exploit an arbitrary border that allocated villages to either the loyalist Mok or the relatively moderate Sy in Kampong Speu province. Using a regression discontinuity design, I find villages in the more extremist Southwest zone are poorer today compared with villages in the adjacent West zone, and had lower human capital immediately after the regime. Exposure to more intense repression shapes labor markets and child health, explaining intergenerational persistence. I find no conclusive evidence for other persistence channels. My findings add a novel pathway to the library of mechanisms which explain why historical coercion undermines development.

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“…In the early 1930s, Catalonia had some autonomy within Spain, with institutions of self-rule. During the Franco dictatorship (1939–77), cultural rights for national minorities in Spain (Basques, Catalans, Galicians) were repressed, and Spanish nationalism was fiercely promoted by state institutions (Balcells & Villamil, 2020). During the transition to democracy in the late 1970s, a process of devolution began and several aspects of self-government in Catalonia were restored in a regional governance system called the ‘State of the Autonomies’ (Colomer, 1998).…”

Section: Background To the Catalan Casementioning

confidence: 99%

Secessionist conflict and affective polarization: Evidence from Catalonia

Balcells

Kuo

2022

Journal of Peace Research

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Can secessionism be a basis for affective or social polarization? Despite much research on independence movements, their relationship to polarization, a key mechanism theorized as increasing the risk of violent conflict, remains less understood. We argue that the issue of secession can affectively polarize along both policy and ethnic group lines even in the case of nonviolent disputes, and posit a number of expectations regarding such secessionist-based polarization. We test our argument with the case of Catalonia, a substate territory that has experienced a deep secessionist crisis since 2017, using new data from a panel survey and embedded experiments fielded across two key time periods. We find that individuals’ secessionist preferences condition high levels of affective polarization, in that pro- and anti-independence advocates have strong negative views of one another. In addition, there is spillover in terms of stereotypes of associated language groups (i.e. Catalan, Spanish). Importantly, we find a group of moderates in between the two policy poles that exhibit far less polarization. Finally, we document the persistence of these overall patterns. Our results contribute to understanding the underexplored polarization dynamics of secessionist movements, particularly in contexts where high intensity violence (e.g. terrorism, civil war) has not occurred.

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The Double Logic of Internal Purges: New Evidence from Francoist Spain

Cited by 8 publications

References 0 publications

Preferences in Between: Moderates in the Catalan Secessionist Conflict

Preferences in Between: Moderates in the Catalan Secessionist Conflict

State Terror and Long-Run Development: The Persistence of the Khmer Rouge

Secessionist conflict and affective polarization: Evidence from Catalonia

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