Does War Exposure Increase Support for State Penetration? Evidence from a Natural Experiment.
Journal
Journal of European Public Policy
Type
forthcoming
Date Issued
2021-12-13
Author(s)
Abstract (De)
Does war exposure increase popular support for state penetration or are changes in taxation and economic intervention primarily elite-driven? Existing research rests mainly at the macro level and is therefore unable to distinguish between the two mechanisms. In this paper, we employ a natural experiment to investigate whether direct war exposure affects popular preferences for state penetration in the post-war period. We use accidental bombardments of Swiss municipalities during the Second World War as treatments to examine whether popular preferences expressed in direct democratic votes on tax policies and economic intervention in war-affected municipalities followed different trajectories in the post-war period compared to municipalities that were not the target of accidental bombardments. We show that war exposure increased popular support for state intervention into the economy, but we do not find an effect of accidental bombardments on popular support for more progressive taxes or the extension of fiscal capacity.
Language
English
HSG Classification
contribution to scientific community
HSG Profile Area
SEPS - Global Democratic Governance
Refereed
No
Publisher
Taylor & Francis
Volume
29
Number
5
Start page
652
End page
669
Subject(s)
Division(s)
Eprints ID
263182