Collective Victimhood Beliefs and Conflict-Related Attitudes: A Meta-Analysis

Comparative Political Studies · 2025-10-10

This study conducts a meta-analysis of the impact of collective victimhood beliefs on conflict-related attitudes. Examining 745 estimates from 103 articles, we assess the relationship between collective victimhood beliefs and hawkishness, reconciliation, out-group exclusion, and in-group attachment. While we find an aggregate positive association between collective victimhood beliefs and conflict-enhancing attitudes, there is an important distinction between non-inclusive and inclusive forms of collective victimhood: non-inclusive collective victimhood beliefs are associated with greater conflict-enhancing attitudes, whereas inclusive collective victimhood beliefs generally have opposing effects. These results are consistent across a wide range of geographic contexts, types of conflict experiences, and identities. They also extend to the association between collective victimhood beliefs and the emotions and cognitive perspectives that are often identified as mediators. Methodologically, observational and experimental studies reach similar conclusions about the direction of collective victimhood beliefs' impact, but experimental studies find consistently smaller effect sizes.

Domestic Legitimacy, Coethnics Abroad, and the Shape of the Homeland

Comparative Political Studies · 2025-01-10

Why does the presence of coethnics across the border sometimes lead to categorizing that land as part of the homeland, but sometimes not? We argue this variation is shaped by whether regimes use ethnic logics to elicit domestic legitimacy. Relying on shared ethnicity for legitimacy elevates ethnicity’s political salience, making ethnic groups living across borders socially meaningful and enabling continued claims to their land as part of the homeland. Using survival analysis, we demonstrate that coethnics’ presence on lost lands significantly influences whether those lands maintain their homeland status largely in contexts where ethnic legitimacy is prominent, such as autocracies, states that marginalize populations along ethnic lines, and countries where the government’s legitimacy cannot be based on economic performance. We also illustrate this phenomenon with a case study of Croatia. Our findings have important implications for understanding how ethnicity interacts with domestic politics to shape territorial conflict.

Re‐evaluating the impact of collective victimhood on conflict attitudes: Results from a natural experiment, a survey experiment, and panel study using Israel's Holocaust Memorial Day

American Journal of Political Science · 2024-08-31 · 3 citations

Abstract A significant observational literature identifies a link between collective victimhood and conflict‐enhancing attitudes, though results from experimental work increasing victimhood's salience vary. This article thus revisits this question in two studies in a context in which increased salience is especially likely to shift attitudes. Study 1 exploits the happenstance fielding of 12 surveys over Israel's Holocaust Memorial Day between 1979 and 2021. Using all 192 available estimates assessing hawkishness, preferences for out‐group exclusion, and in‐group solidarity, it fails to detect statistically significant effects of a state‐led effort to increase the salience of Israel's collective victimhood narrative in a natural setting 90% of the time. Study 2 replicates the null findings across multiple comparisons and outcomes in a companion harmonized panel and survey experiment. Substantively, the findings suggest that it may be harder to use short‐term manipulations of collective victimhood to shift attitudes than often assumed.

Collective victimhood and conflict-related attitudes: A meta-analysis

2024-01-03 · 2 citations

This study presents a meta-analysis of collective victimhood's impact on conflict-related attitudes. Examining 745 estimates from 103 articles, we assess the impact of collective victimhood on hawkishness, reconciliation (attitudes towards current or former adversaries), out-group exclusion (attitudes towards groups with which one is not in direct conflict), and in-group attachment. We find that collective victimhood is associated with greater conflict-enhancing attitudes, though "inclusive" victimhood generally has opposing effects. These results are consistent across a wide range of geographic contexts, types of victimhood experiences, and identities. They also extend to the impact of collective victimhood on the emotions and cognitive perspectives that are often identified as mediators. Methodologically, observational and experimental studies reach similar conclusions about the direction of collective victimhood's impact, but experimental studies find consistently smaller effect sizes.

9. Lessons from How Nationalisms Evolve for a One State Reality

Cornell University Press eBooks · 2023-02-23

Contents

Cornell University Press eBooks · 2023-02-23

Lessons from How Nationalisms Evolve for a One State Reality

Cornell University Press eBooks · 2023-03-15

This chapter examines the likelihood of nationalism evolving into a one state reality. It also considers the role of domestic politics in driving the transformation. Nationalist ideologies evolve and detail the kinds of denationalization that would need to occur to achieve peaceful coexistence in a one state reality. The chapter notes how histories of Zionism and Palestinian nationalism suggest that these kinds of denationalization are possible because some versions already occurred in the past. Since the prospects of denationalization are linked to the outcome of the domestic political fight between nationalist and denationalization projects, it is not clear that painful conflict in a single state reality will result in a better outcome than territorial surgery.

Domestic Military Deployments in Response to COVID-19

Armed Forces & Society · 2022 · 31 citations

• Political Science
• Computer Security
• Sociology

Militaries are commonly deployed in response to domestic disasters. However, our understanding of this phenomenon remains incomplete, partly because the particulars of disasters make it hard to generalize about deployments used in response. This article leverages the COVID-19 pandemic's global reach to systematically evaluate common hypotheses about when and how militaries are used to respond to domestic disasters. It presents original global data about domestic military deployments in pandemic response and uses it to assess common theoretical expectations about what shapes whether and how militaries are used in such contexts. The results suggest that decisions about whether to deploy militaries stem from the securitization of domestic disaster relief rather than being responses to specific disaster-related features, state capacity shortcomings, or other social or political factors, even as some of these elements shaped how militaries were used. The article concludes by outlining some hypotheses for future research about the impact of this securitization on civil-military relations.

International recognition and support for violence among nonpartisans

Journal of Peace Research · 2022-09-09 · 3 citations

Abstract What reduces individual support for the use of violence among groups seeking self-determination? This article advances a new explanation for changes in popular support for violence – international recognition – and evaluates this explanation using a survey experiment of Palestinians priming the 2012 UNGA recognition of Palestine. The analysis shows that priming recognition reduces support for violence among a key segment of the population, nonpartisans, who have weaker and more fluid prior beliefs about the use of violence than partisans. The article argues that recognition reduces support for violence among nonpartisans by conveying new information that shifts the expected payoffs of violent and nonviolent strategies. This article deepens the incorporation of party politics into the study of conflict and demonstrates that international diplomatic engagement can reduce popular support for violence in an ongoing conflict. This is important because most previously identified determinants of support for violence are either very difficult to change or change very slowly.

Homelands and Nationalism

Nationalities Papers · 2021 · 7 citations

• Political Science
• Sociology
• Political Science

Abstract Homelands are an integral component of nationalism. This recognition notwithstanding, the lines nationalism draws on the globe have received much less systematic attention than the lines drawn between in-groups and out-groups. This article argues that homelands, precisely because they are so central to nationalism, should be more consistently integrated into scholarship on international conflict, among other outcomes. We begin by detailing what homelands are, why they matter, and some suggested mechanisms for how they impact outcomes of interest. The next section considers the choices scholars make about identifying homelands, including the particular measurement strategy and the level of analysis used. Here, we highlight recent advances that enable the measurement and analysis of homelands in ways consistent with both constructivist insights about the possibility of variation in the homeland’s extent (both over time and within populations) and with positivist analysis. We conclude by sketching out future directions for research on homelands and nationalism.