Historical Memories, Political Attitudes and Electoral Behavior: Evidence from Post-War Germany

The analysis of the political consequences of historical memory is the object of rich scholarly conversations in history and sociology, but the literature on memory has generally remained detached from the broader debates on democratization, historical legacies, and regime change. We analyse the impact of the decisions on the “politics of the past” that are taken after a democratic transition on subsequent political attitudes and electoral behavior. Focusing on the division of Germany in different occupation zones in the immediate aftermath of the war, we leverage sub-national differences in institutional and policy choices for dealing with the legacies of the Nazi past in post-war Germany to study subsequent variations in individual political attitudes and local electoral outcomes to isolate the impact of early institutional choices.