Terrorism, Trust, and Identity: Evidence from a Natural Experiment in Nigeria

Harding, Robin; Nwokolo, Arinze

doi:10.1111/ajps.12769

Cited by 8 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 45 publications

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“…In a study conducted in the wake of a terrorist attack perpetrated by the radical Islamist group Boko Haram, Harding and Nwokolo (2023) found that exposure to violence weakened Nigerians' sense of national identity and strengthened their feeling of ethnic belonging. Analyzing survey data for Nigeria, found that exposure to violent conflict made Nigerians reluctant to have people of a different ethnicity and religion as neighbors.…”

Section: Theoretical Considerationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Inverted “U” of fear: The paradox of conflict exposure and expected victimization in Kaduna, Nigeria

Tuki

2024

Preprint

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Using novel survey data collected from the Northern Nigerian state of Kaduna, this study examines the effect of exposure to violent conflict on people’s expectation of being directly affected by violent conflict in the future. The regression results show that there is a curvilinear relationship akin to an inverted “U” between conflict exposure and expected victimization. This suggests that at low levels of conflict exposure, people worry that they will be victimized. As conflict exposure increases, so does their fear of being victimized. This persists until the point at which expected victimization peaks. Further exposure to violent conflict beyond this peak leads to a decline in expected victimization. The decline after the peak might be because the threat of violent conflict prompts people to rely more heavily on their ethnoreligious kinship ties for both material and non-material support, which in turn attenuates their fear of being victimized.

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Section: Theoretical Considerationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Inverted “U” of fear: The paradox of conflict exposure and expected victimization in Kaduna, Nigeria

Tuki

2024

Preprint

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“…Since the day and person interviewed are fixed in advance and not affected by the war, our design resembles a natural experiment: the invasion is a random shock to respondents who were interviewed just after the start of the war, which we then compare to respondents that were interviewed before the invasion began. This research design has been used to estimate the causal effect of other types of shocks on attitudes in previous research (27,(33)(34)(35).…”

Section: Main Textmentioning

confidence: 99%

Do wars abroad affect attitudes at home? Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and European public opinion

Vlandas

Klymak

2023

Preprint

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What is the effect of wars abroad on the attitudes of people living in countries that are not directly involved? Using representative samples from eight European countries, we explore how the Russian invasion has affected over twenty social and political attitudes. To estimate causal effects, we adopt the ‘Unexpected Event during Survey Design’ which leverages the overlap between the survey fieldwork and the timing of Russia’s invasion. We find that the war increased support for democracy, redistribution, Europe, and immigration, while it reduced authoritarian attitudes. Our findings are the first to show empirically that wars abroad have a causal impact on public opinion even in countries not directly involved in a conflict.

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“…Non-compliance could be an issue if, for instance, some members of the treatment group are not exposed to a treatment because they are unaware of its occurrence (Harding and Nwokolo, 2023). While we cannot directly test for or rule out non-compliance, we think that it is unlikely to be a significant concern for three reasons.…”

Section: In Thementioning

confidence: 93%

“…The estimates may also be biased because of attrition and non-compliance (Gerber and Green, 2012;Harding and Nwokolo, 2023). We check for attrition bias (systematic drop-out by respondents) by estimating the correlation between treatment status and item non-response for our outcome variable.…”

Section: In Thementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Scholars have examined the influence of terrorist attacks on institutional trust (Wollebaek et al, 2012;Dinesen and Jaeger, 2013), government approval (Schubert et al, 2002;Holman et al, 2022), and electoral outcomes (Montalvo, 2011), focusing mostly on consolidated democracies (Godefroidt, 2023). A less developed body of literature suggests that political violence (Arce, 2003), rebel attacks (Gates and Justesen, 2020), and terrorism (Harding and Nwokolo, 2023) also affect public opinion in fragile democracies. We contribute to this work in two ways.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Essays on Democracy, Redistribution, and Inequality

Koob

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Economic inequality continues to thrive in democracies across the world. This is puzzling because theory predicts that the ideals of democracy should induce more equal societies. At the same time, high levels of inequality tend to undermine democratic institutions. It may be that many democracies are trapped in a vicious cycle of persistent economic inequality and democratic backsliding, which may be difficult to alter. The purpose of this dissertation is to examine the general question of why inequality persists in democracies with a focus on the means by which the poor can exert political influence to remedy persistent inequality and why they may fail to do so. The dissertation consists of three independent chapters. Each addresses the links between democracy, redistribution and inequality from different angles. In Chapter 1, I examine the general link between democracy and economic inequality by analysing the distributional dynamics of economic growth in democracies relative to autocracies. The chapter shows that democracies are, on average, no better than autocracies when it comes to inclusive economic growth (growth that is associated with a reduction in economic inequality). However, when countries are classified according to their de facto implementation of democratic institutions, liberal democracies do foster inclusive growth in both relative and absolute terms. Chapter 2 and Chapter 3 focus on the political power of the poor to influence redistributive policies in electoral democracies. Each chapter examines different forms of political action that are available to the poor. Chapter 2 focuses on voting and on the impact of clientelism, which may shape how elections serve to channel demand for programmatic redistribution into the political system. The chapter shows that clientelism adversely affects voter support for political candidates regardless of efforts to provide programmatic redistribution. Chapter 3 focuses on protest as an alternative (or complementary) form of political action to influence redistribution when the electoral process is curtailed. The chapter shows that the poor may hold some de facto political power by virtue of protests. However, the magnitude of that power depends on the choice of protest tactics. The dissertation arrives at these novel insights by employing both observational and experimental quantitative research designs with an emphasis on causal inference. The research questions are analysed both across countries and among individual voters in two unequal electoral democracies; Brazil and South Africa. The dissertation adds to the understanding on the causes of equilibria of persistent inequality, low programmatic redistribution, and democratic backsliding, which are liable to emerge when poor citizens are deprived of political power - at the ballot box or in the streets.

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Terrorism, Trust, and Identity: Evidence from a Natural Experiment in Nigeria

Cited by 8 publications

References 45 publications

Inverted “U” of fear: The paradox of conflict exposure and expected victimization in Kaduna, Nigeria

Inverted “U” of fear: The paradox of conflict exposure and expected victimization in Kaduna, Nigeria

Do wars abroad affect attitudes at home? Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and European public opinion

Essays on Democracy, Redistribution, and Inequality

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