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Is terrorism effective as a tool of political influence? In particular, do terrorists succeed in affecting their targets’ attitudes, and how long does the effect last? Existing research unfortunately is either limited to small samples or does not address two main difficulties: issues of endogeneity and the inability to assess the duration of the effect. Here, we first exploit the exogeneity to the selection process of the success or failure of an attack as an identification mechanism. Second, we take advantage of the random allocation of survey respondents to interview times to estimate the duration of the impact of terrorist events on attitudes. Using survey data from 30 European democracies between 2002 and 2017, we find first that terrorism affects people's reported life satisfaction and happiness—a proxy for the cost of terrorism in terms of utility. However, we also find that terrorist attacks do not affect respondents’ attitude toward their government, institutions, or immigrants. This suggests that terrorism is ineffective at translating discontent into political pressure. Importantly, we also find that all effects disappear within less than two weeks.

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Why do some countries host more refugees than others? Previous research has focused on the role of geographical, political, and economic determinants, and little attention has been paid to civil conflict dynamics. In this article, I examine how a host country’s support for rebel groups may affect the number of refugees that it accommodates. Countries that support rebels host a higher number of refugees than others, as accommodating refugees can be the continuation of that support and help rebel groups in their armed struggle. By hosting people, countries may offer a sanctuary from which rebels can operate some of their insurgent activities. Rebel groups can exploit these camps for recruitment, training, and benefiting from the main services such as health care. In addition, when rebels operate in host countries, these countries may monitor, impact, or even direct the strategies of insurgent groups. Analysis of refugee flows between 1968 and 2011 suggests that countries which support rebel groups host twice as many refugees as others. Results are robust to various model specifications, two different sources for the main explanatory variable, matching analysis, and additional checks. Findings of this article highlight the importance of conflict dynamics in explaining the variation in refugee flows.

National identity remains one of the most potent forces in global politics, yet surprisingly little is known about processes of national identity formation and change. This article argues that national identity preferences are susceptible to fluctuations in group status and distance but constrained by conflict experience and socialization. Integrating research on conflict socialization with social identity theory, we hypothesize that growing up during violent intergroup conflict socializes individuals into identities and attitudes which are durable to significant changes. Conversely, the identity preferences of those who grow up during relative peace are more malleable and likely to change due to significant events which affect perception of group identities. Exploiting the unique political context in Northern Ireland, where individuals can legally choose to identify as Irish, British, or both, we use a diff-in-diff approach to estimate national identity preferences of individuals before and after the EU referendum. The results show that 20% of Protestants who did not experience conflict shifted from British towards Irish identity after the referendum. However, for those who experienced violent intergroup conflict, there is a ‘durable distance’ between groups which constrains identity change irrespective of fluctuations in status. The results have important implications for our understanding of national identity, particularly in post-conflict societies.