🔎 Background
A substantial observational literature links collective victimhood to conflict-enhancing attitudes, but experimental evidence is mixed. This research revisits that puzzle in a context where increasing the salience of collective victimhood—the state-led framing around Israel's Holocaust Memorial Day—would be especially likely to change attitudes.
📅 Natural experiment: Surveys Around Holocaust Memorial Day (1979–2021)
- Exploits the happenstance fielding of 12 national surveys conducted over Israel's Holocaust Memorial Day between 1979 and 2021.
- Pools all 192 available estimates that measure three outcome types: hawkishness, preferences for out-group exclusion, and in-group solidarity.
- Finds no statistically significant effect of the state-led attempt to raise the salience of Israel's collective victimhood narrative in 90% of comparisons.
🧪 Replication: Harmonized Panel and Survey Experiment
- Uses a companion harmonized panel and a survey experiment to test the same predictions and outcomes across multiple comparisons.
- Replicates the null findings across those various specifications and outcome measures.
💡 What This Means
- These results suggest that short-term manipulations that temporarily increase the salience of collective victimhood may be less effective at shifting conflict-related attitudes than commonly assumed.
- The findings do not deny a relationship between victimhood narratives and politics more broadly, but they highlight limitations for short-term, state-led salience interventions in altering hawkishness, exclusionary preferences, or in-group solidarity.
