HPS³ -Riccardo di Leo - Terrorism, Perpetrators and Polarization: Evidence from Natural ExperimentsWe welcome Riccardo di Leo (Universidad Carlos III, Madrid) on April 5 2023
5 April 2023
The Hamburg Political Science Seminar Series (HPS³) features international speakers presenting cutting-edge research in empirical political science and political economy.
We welcome on April 5 2023, 17:15-18:45 CET in VMP9 S27 & via Zoom
Riccardo di Leo (Universidad Carlos III, Madrid) - ”Terrorism, Perpetrators and Polarization: Evidence from Natural Experiments”
(joint with Vincenzo Bove (University of Warwick), Georgios Efthyvoulou (University of Sheffield) and Harry Pickard (Newcastle University))
Abstract: We analyse whether affective polarization - the extent to which citizens feel sympathy towards partisan in-groups and antagonism towards partisan out-groups - can be aggravated by terrorism violence. Terrorist attacks intensify pre-existing ideological worldviews and partisan leanings and bring divisive political issues to the fore. Yet, they can also lead individuals from the entire political spectrum to come together and dissociate from the terrorists and their radical ideas. To identify causal effects, we exploit a series of natural experiments in Great Britain and leverage the timing of fatal far-right and Islamic terrorist attacks and the date of interview of respondents in the British Election Study. We find that Islamic attacks increase affective polarization whereas far-right attacks depolarize the electorate. We demonstrate that this discrepancy is largely driven by the salience of the attack - and the resulting threat perceptions - and the attitudes towards contentious and polarizing issues.
Keywords: Islamic terrorism; far-right terrorism; polarization; natural experiment
The HPS³ seminars take place on wednesdays in the summer semester 2023 in person in VMP9 and are live-streamed on Zoom.
Please find the preliminary program on the HPS³ Website.
We invite everyone interested to attend and are looking forward to seeing you.