Theme Panel: Experiments on Violence and Political Behavior

August 6, 2025 APSA Annual Meeting, Theme Panels Comments Off on Theme Panel: Experiments on Violence and Political Behavior

Co-sponsored by Division 21: Conflict Processes

In-Person Full Paper Panel

Participants:

  • (Chair) Francesca Parente, Christopher Newport University
  • (Discussant) Carly Nicole Wayne, Washington University in St. Louis
  • (Discussant) Lauren E Young, University of California, Davis

Session Description:

This panel brings together four papers that answer causal questions about violence and political behavior using experimental methods, including two survey experiments, one field experiment, and one lab-in-the-field experiment. Answering causal questions in conflict settings is notoriously difficult, because the explanatory variables we might care about (for example, exposure to violence, exposure to violent rhetoric, or exposure to memorialization sites) are not randomly assigned. The papers in this panel seek to address the causal mechanisms that underpin the relationship between violence and political outcomes, attitudes, and participation in a broad range of conflict settings around the world. Taken together, the panel contributes to important conversations on conflict processes, including both what we can learn about the impact of violence and memorialization of violence on political attitudes, as well as how we as political scientists might study such questions.

Balcells, Parente, and vanderWilden use a field experiment to evaluate the impact of visiting the US Holocaust Memorial Museum on antisemitism and attitudes toward democracy and present-day injustices, including the current war in Gaza. Davis and Turnbull conduct a survey experiment in Nigeria to assess how exposure to candidates that condone electoral violence affects political participation. Mailhot considers how international missions affect institutional trust in post-conflict Bosnia and Kosovo using survey experiments. Finally, Milliff and Read use a lab-in-the-field experiment in India to assess how disapproval messages from various actors affect attitudes toward vigilante violence.

The papers in this panel are geographically and thematically diverse, spanning contexts as varied as a memorial museum in the United States, electoral politics in Nigeria, post-conflict institutional reforms in the Balkans, and responses to vigilantism in India. Each paper highlights how experimental methods can be adapted to suit different political, cultural, and social contexts, offering lessons not only for academic audiences but also for practitioners and policymakers working on conflict resolution and violence mitigation.