Motherland under attack! Nationalism, terrorist threat, and support for the restriction of civil liberties

Abstract

Motherland under attack! Nationalism, terrorist threat, and support for the restriction of civil liberties The paper addresses the role which national attitudes play in terrorist threat perception and in the choice of specific counterterrorism strategies. Study 1 shows that participants higher on nationalism tend to perceive the threat of terrorism as more serious than participants lower on nationalism. Moreover, we found that nationalism mediated the relationship between the perceived terrorist threat and the support for tough domestic policies, even at the expense of considerable limitation of civil liberties. Study 2 confirms the link between the perceived terrorism threat and the support for suspension of civil liberties. Nevertheless, when terrorism was seen in terms of crime rather than in terms of war, the mediating role of nationalism disappeared. The results contribute to a better understanding of the process whereby the perception of one's own national group and the perception of one's own nation-state translate into specific reactions triggered by external threats.

The Politics of Intergroup Attitudes

“…Specifically, conservatism, nationalism, and (to a lesser extent) right-wing orientation positively predicted terrorism anxiety, even after adjusting for our key predictors and other covariates. This is consistent with previous studies showing that perceived threat from terrorism correlates with political ideology (left/right-wing or liberal/conservative; Cohrs, Kielman, Maes, & Moschner, 2005;Crowson, Debacker, & Thoma, 2006;De Zavala, Cislak, & Wesolowska, 2010) and national identity (Sekerdej & Kossowska, 2011).…”

What reduces support for civil liberties: Authoritarianism, national identity, and perceived threat

“…For example, in a situation of threat when national security is more important than civil liberties, national pride can be expected to lead to supporting restrictions (Davis & Silver, 2004;Davis, 2007). This relationship was also plausible for nationalism as was shown in a study by Sekerdej and Kossowska (2011), where people high in nationalism were more restrictive of civil liberties.…”

The effect of perceived threat on human rights: A meta-analysis

“…Those who endorsed high importance of "being American" as part of their identity were more likely than those who did not to favor policies that would expel unauthorized immigrants, favor large decreases in immigration levels, favor status checks, and oppose citizenship for illegal immigrants who entered the United States as children (Espinosa et al, 2018;Marshall & Shapiro, 2018). The rise of nationalism is a rise of anti-human-rights sentiment -with strong positive associations between uncritical acceptance of national authorities and a belief in the superiority and dominant status of one's nation and greater support for restrictions of civil liberties for one's ingroup and outgroup (Sekerdej & Kossowska, 2011). Therefore, there may be important considerations around the costs and benefits of "citizenship" as an ingroup.…”