Policy preferences in a post-war environment

Abstract

Can reminders of violence committed in the past influence citizens’ policy preferences in the present? Prior work has found that under the threat of violence individuals prioritize safety and adopt policy views aimed at reducing the threat. Elites can then strategically employ concerns over personal safety and security to shape the public’s preferences. I contribute to this literature by conducting an exploratory study of whether invocations of violence committed in the past shape preferences in the long-term, years after the actual violence has ended. To do so, I fielded an experiment on a large (N = 1125) and nationally representative sample of respondents in Bosnia, the site of a major ethnic civil war in 1992–1995. I did not find evidence that reminders of wartime violence in and of themselves affect policy preferences. Ultimately, this study represents a first cut at a neglected question in the literature and has implications that could motivate future research on the relationship between violent conflict and policy preferences.