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Terrorism activates ethnocentrism to explain greater willingness to sacrifice civil liberties: evidence from Germany

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 March 2022

Christina Novak Hansen Open the ORCID record for Christina Novak Hansen [Opens in a new window]  and
Peter Thisted Dinesen Open the ORCID record for Peter Thisted Dinesen [Opens in a new window]
Christina Novak Hansen*
Affiliation:
ESCP Europe Business School Berlin, Berlin Campus, Heubnerweg 8-10, DE-14059 Berlin, Germany
Peter Thisted Dinesen
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, University College London, 29-31 Tavistock Square, London WC1H 9QU, United Kingdom Department of Political Science, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark
*
*Corresponding author. Email: cnovakhansen@escp.eu
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Abstract

Research from the United States has shown that the 9/11 terrorist attacks activated individuals’ ethnocentric predispositions to structure public opinion toward several political and social issues. Beyond this overall finding, several aspects of the activation hypothesis remain unexplored, including its geographical and substantive scope. Using the quasi-random timing of terrorist attacks during the collection of the 2016 GGSS, we demonstrate the terrorism-induced activation of ethnocentrism in Germany. Specifically, a cascade of terrorist attacks involving immigrants in the summer of 2016 activated ethnocentrism among native Germans to predict (lower) support for civil liberties relative to security concerns after its influence had been absent just a month before. Further, we show that the activation of ethnocentrism holds up in a series of robustness checks and is not explained by alternative factors, including other predispositions.

Keywords

Civil libertiesethnocentrismEuropeGermanyterrorism
Type
Research Note
Information
Political Science Research and Methods , Volume 11 , Issue 2 , April 2023 , pp. 402 - 409
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the European Political Science Association

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https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/RRLCNP
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