Friday, March 14, 2014
Forum (Omni Shoreham)
How do rapid changes in ethnic heterogeneity affect political preferences and how persistent are these effects? Although the literature on ethnic diversity is well established, the long-term implications of ethnic transformations remain undertheorized. This paper uses geo-coded historic census data to examine the effects of historic ruptures in ethnic geography on current attitudes toward European integration. I focus on the critical juncture at the end of WWII, when national borders in Europe were redrawn and millions were resettled based on their ethnicity. Some areas became homogenous virtually overnight while others became home to migrants of various origins - a natural experiment that allows us to isolate the effects of rapid demographic changes on political attitudes. I argue that varying approaches to managing diversity in the 1940s contributed to the formation of different national identities that persist until today. These identities mediate voters’ reactions to identity claims articulated by political entrepreneurs. In particular, the paper demonstrates that WWII legacies in Poland explain the baseline levels of receptiveness to right-wing nationalist rhetoric and the variation in support for the European project at the local level. In counties with a history of anti-Semitism, the level of opposition to EU integration is positively associated with the share of Jews on the eve of WWII. Conversely, in the new territories that Poland acquired from Germany in 1945, diversity in the origin of the population at the county level is correlated with multiculturalist values and EU support.
