PRE-ANALYSIS PLAN CAN INTERNATIONAL DECELERATIONS AFFECT POLITICAL BEHAVIOR? Trump’s Deal of the Century and Palestinian Voting in Israel

Chagai M. Weiss∗

February 27, 2020

Overview

Can international decelerations shape political participation? Political scientists have long acknowledged the close links between domestic and international politics (Gourevitch, 1978; Putnam, 1988). More so, a nascent literature considers the effects of international interventions in elections on public opinion. Indeed, survey and experimental evidence suggest that overt and covert statements and actions made by international actors in support of a given candidate, can shape voters’ perceptions regarding the legitimacy of elections, and international politics more broadly (Shulman and Bloom, 2012; Corstange and Marinov, 2012; Bush and Prather, 2018; Tomz and Weeks, 2016). In addition, cross-national evidence suggests that election interventions by the US and Russia have contributed to the success of aided candidates (Levin, 2019). Nonetheless, the extent to which the words of international leaders can affect turnout rates of local voters remains unclear. Addressing this question is of key importance, as political engagement is essential to democracy, and it is unclear if and how turnout may be sensitive to decelerations made by international actors.

To identify the effects of international decelerations on political participation, I turn to the Israeli case. Specifically, I examine whether Donald Trump’s Deal of the Century, which posed a threat of population transfer over a set of Palestinian-Israeli villages in an area called The Triangle, increased turnout amongst threatened Palestinian voters. To do so, I leverage three recurring national elections within one year, and implement a difference-in-difference design, comparing Palestinian turnout in The Triangle area with Pales- tinian turnout in all remaining non-Jewish localities in Israel, before and after Trump’s declaration of the deal of the century. I expect that the threat of population transfer imposed by Trump’s Deal of the Century, will increase turnout amongst threatened Palestinian voters.

∗University of Wisconsin - Madison. Q: [email protected], Œ: www.chagaimweiss.com

1 The Deal of the Century

On January 28, 2020, slightly more than a month prior to a third round of Israeli national elections, Donald Trump convened a press-conference together with Israeli Prime-minister Benjamin Netanyahu, to reveal his “Peace to Prosperity” plan, which is intended to serve as a base for future negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians (Crowley and Halbfinger, 2020). Trump’s plan, referred to by many political pundits as “The Deal of the Century”, lays out a renewed American vision for future political arrangements between Israelis and Palestinians. This vision, which was devised without consultation with Palestinian officials, differs from earlier US stances regarding Israeli-Palestinian negotiations on several dimensions. Perhaps the most notable difference relates to the drawing of boundaries which accept the presence of most Israeli settlements in the West Bank. However, the plan also included what was a surprising element – reference to the potential transfer of 10 localities in the “Triangle Area” from Israeli to Palestinian control (Landau and Tibon, 2020).

Anecdotal evidence suggests that the threat of population transfer evoked stark opposition amongst Palestinian Israeli citizens residing in the “Triangle Area” (Itiel and Shalev, 2020). Indeed, the deal of the century, and the fate of Palestinian Israeli citizens residing in the “Triangle Area”, has become a salient dimension of the Arab Joint list’s campaign, as a third round of elections for the Israeli Knesset approach (see Figure1). However, one may wonder whether the threat imposed by the Deal of the Century, might affect political participation in the “Triangle Area”.

Figure 1: Joint Arab List campaign advertisement – The advertisement invites people to a demonstration in Tel Aviv, and advocates: “No to Annexation! No to Apartheid! No to the Transfer!” Yes to Peace!

2 Hypothesis

My main expectation is that the threat imposed by Trump’s “Peace to Prosperity” plan will increase political participation amongst voters in the “Triangle Area”. It formally follows that there should be a statistically significant difference in turnout between localities in the “Triangle Area” and all other Arab localities during the third national elections to the 23rd Israeli parliament, which will take place on March 2, 2019.

My my main interest is in the effects of international decelerations on domestic political participation (i.e. tunrout). However, I will also consider effects of the Deal of the Century on vote share for the main Palestinian party running for the Israeli Knesset – the Arab Joint List. In a similar fashion to my main hypothesis, I expect to identify a positive effect on Arab Joint List vote share.

Research Design

I adapt a difference-in-difference design, which compares changes over time in turnout between non-Jewish localities within and outside of “the Triangle”. Doing so, I seek to recover the effects of the “Peace to Prosperity” plan on voting behavior of Palestinians exposed to the threat of population transfer. By focusing on three consecutive national elections occurring within one year, I reduce concerns regarding time-varying unobservables which may confound my estimates. That said, my empirical inquiry rests on a qualitatively grounded assumption that other than the threat of population transfer imposed by the Deal of the Century (which I seek to identify), there are no factors that systematically differentiate Palestinian localities within and outside of “the Triangle” at the time between the second and third round of elections during the recent years. Under this assumption, and in light of on an evaluation of parallel trends presented in Figure2,I estimate the following difference-in-difference equation, amongst all non-Jewish localities in Israel (n = 155, over three recurring elections), and cluster errors at the locality level:

yit = α + γtriangle + ηpost + ζpopulation + ψtriangle∗post + εit (1)

The code for my main estimation is presented below: 1 2 # ------3 # Difference-in-Difference recovering the effect of the deal 4 # of the century on turnout in the triangle area 5 # ------6 7 felm(turnout ˜ triangle*post + pop_2018 | 0 | 0 |lcode, 8 data = elections, 9 exactDOF=TRUE, 10 keepCX = TRUE)

3 ●

0.60

Data will be avaialable 0.55 ● ● after March 2 2019 ● Triangle

Turnout ● Non−Triangle 0.50

0.45

● PRE POST First Second Third Election Cycle

Figure 2: Parallel trends of voting in the first two rounds of election (2019)

Simulated Data

One concern regarding my prospective research design relates to statistical power. As noted above, I focus on 155 non-Jewish localities, over 3 recurring elections in one year. Out of these 155 localities, 10 were treated.1

To lend insight into the effect size my design can detect, I employ data from the first two rounds of elections, which occurred over the past year (April 2019 and September 2019). Doing so, I simulate turnout rates for the third round of elections which will take place on March 2, 2019. Specifically, I simulate turnout rates in the prospective election to represent varying changes in participation within the triangle area (ranging from 2-4.5 percent). These effect sizes are motivated by previous studies employing difference-in- difference designs to identify changes in voting behavior amongst the Israeli electorate. Effect sizes in such studies range between 2%-6% (Getmansky and Zeitzoff, 2014).

In Figure3, I present results from my main model, considering different simulations of turnout in the upcoming elections. The main quantity of interest in this figure is the Triangle*Post coefficient, rep- resenting the difference-in-difference estimator. As evident from Figure3, my estimation strategy is suffi- ciently powered to identify shifts in turnout which are around 2.5%.

1Kafr Qara, Ar’ara, Baha al-Gharbiyye, Umm al Fahm, Qalansawe, Tayibe, Kafr Qasim, Tira, Kafr Bara and Jaljulia.

4 Triangle ● Effect ● 2%

2.5%

Post 3%

● 3.5%

4%

4.5% Triangle* Post ●

0.00 0.04 0.08 0.12 Effect Size

Figure 3: Difference in Difference Models With Simulated Data for the Upcoming Third Election. Point estimates and their corresponding 95% confidence intervals from six different models. All Models control for locality level population, and errors are clustered at the locality level. Each model considers a different effect size, by which turnout in the upcoming elections increases in the triangle area. My main interest is the difference-in-difference estimator – Triangle*Post.

5 References

Bush, Sarah Sunn and Lauren Prather. 2018. “Who’s There? Election Observer Identity and the Local Credibility of Elections.” International Organization 72(3):659–692.

Corstange, Daniel and Nikolay Marinov. 2012. “Taking sides in other people’s elections: The polarizing effect of foreign intervention.” American Journal of Political Science 56(3):655–670.

Crowley, Michael and David M. Halbfinger. 2020. “Trump Releases Mideast Peace Plan That Strongly Favors Israel.” The New York Times .

Getmansky, Anna and Thomas Zeitzoff. 2014. “Terrorism and voting: The effect of rocket threat on voting in Israeli elections.” American Political Science Review 108(3):588–604.

Gourevitch, Peter. 1978. “The second image reversed: the international sources of domestic politics.” Inter- national organization 32(4):881–912.

Itiel, Yoav and Tal Shalev. 2020. “Rage in the Joint List regarding Population Transfer in Trump’s Deal of the Century: ”The Transfer will not go through”.” YNET .

Landau, Noa and Amir Tibon. 2020. “Trump’s Peace Plan Calls for Two States, Settlement Freeze.” Haaretz .

Levin, Dov H. 2019. “Partisan electoral interventions by the great powers: Introducing the PEIG Dataset.” Conflict Management and Peace Science 36(1):88–106.

Putnam, Robert D. 1988. “Diplomacy and domestic politics: the logic of two-level games.” International organization 42(3):427–460.

Shulman, Stephen and Stephen Bloom. 2012. “The legitimacy of foreign intervention in elections: the Ukrainian response.” Review of International Studies 38(2):445–471.

Tomz, Michael and Jessica LP Weeks. 2016. “Public opinion and foreign electoral intervention.” Changes 2019:1.

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