• Abstract and Figures
• Public Full-text

How Threats of Exclusion Mobilize Palestinian Political Participation∗ Chagai M. Weissy Alexandra Siegelz David Romneyx February 13, 2021 Word Count: 9,551 Do exclusionary policies mobilize minority political participation? We theorize that the threat of being targeted by an exclusionary policy elevates personal stakes in politics and facilitates mobilization. To test our theory, we leverage Donald Trump’s announcement of a peace plan for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which posed an unexpected threat to the citizenship status of Palestinian Citizens of Israel residing within ten localities in the Triangle, a concentration of Arab towns and villages near the West Bank. First, using over 200,000 posts from public Facebook groups and pages, we show that Trump’s announcement was indeed a more salient political event for Triangle residents, relative to those in non-Triangle localities. Then, em- ploying locality-level election data as well as records detailing the origin of citizens’ joining a Jewish-Arab social movement, we use a difference-in-difference design to demonstrate that the threat to citizenship imposed by Trump’s plan increased turnout and social movement mo- bilization in the Triangle area. Together, our evidence from three distinct data sources suggests that threats of exclusion can mobilize both formal and informal political behavior, contributing to the literatures on on exclusionary policies, voter turnout, and social mobilization. ∗Authors listed in reverse alphabetical order. The election data analyses of this study were pre- registered on OSF (https://osf.io/wvup7/). We thank Guy Grossman for generously sharing Israeli census data, as well as Lotem Bassan-Nygate, Sarah Bush, Adeline Lo, Nadav Shelef, Jessica Weeks and workshop participants at UW-Madison, Harvard, and the POMEPS junior scholars virtual workshop. yUW-Madison & Harvard University. Q: [email protected]. zUniversity of Colorado - Boulder. Q: [email protected]. xHarvard University. Q: [email protected]. Introduction Exclusionary policies—broadly conceptualized as laws and regulations which target the well-being of religious, ethnic, or racial groups—are commonly adapted by democratic countries around the world. In the U.S., travel bans have been imposed to hinder the mobility of Muslims (Lajevardi and Abrajano 2019), in India recent reforms will likely deprive many Muslims from their rights to citizenship (Wagner and Arora 2020), and in France bans on headscarfs have adversely af- fected Muslim students’ freedom of religion (Abdelgadir and Fouka 2020). Such policies are often adapted by majority group politicians in order to promote homogenization or assimilation (Barak- Corren, Feldman, and Gidron 2018), and their adaptation in societies which are dealing with social diversity is hardly a new phenomenon (Fouka 2019, 2020). There are theoretical reasons to believe that exclusionary policies can politically mobilize or demobilize minority citizens (Oskooii 2018; Hobbs and Lajevardi 2019). However, it remains un- clear whether the threat of an exclusionary policy in and of itself shapes minority political behavior. This gap is consequential; politicians often declare their policy intentions well before those policies materialize in the real world. Additionally, mobilization prior to the implementation of negative policies may help prevent those policies from ever becoming reality. Therefore, it is important to examine the political consequences of exclusionary policies before they are implemented. In this paper we test whether and how the threat of an exclusionary policy can shape minority political behavior. Recent literature identifying the effects exclusionary policies on minority behavior has largely overlooked behavioral political outcomes such as voting and mass mobilization. Instead, such studies have focused on social outcomes relating to identity choices, and economic well-being (Fouka 2020; Abdelgadir and Fouka 2020), as well as perceptions regarding the permissibility of discrimination (Barak-Corren, Feldman, and Gidron 2020), and unwillingness to engage in shared spaces (Hobbs and Lajevardi 2019). An adjacent literature considers the political effects of per- ceived discrimination, which is often fueled by exclusionary policies. This literature reports mixed findings, with studies pointing towards positive, negative or null effects of perceived discrimination 1 on partisan identification and self-reported political behaviors (Diehl and Blohm 2001; Schildkraut 2005; Oskooii 2016; Kuo, Malhotra, and Mo 2017; Oskooii 2018; Hopkins et al. 2020). Building on existing studies of voter turnout and mass-mobilization, we theorize that the expe- rience of being targeted by an exclusionary policy will mobilize members of minority communities to engage in politics. Specifically, we argue that the threat of being targeted by an exclusionary policy can elevate individuals’ personal and communal stakes in politics. In turn, the realization that future political developments may harm one’s personal and communal well-being (Simmons 2016), can lead minority group members to engage in politics (Valentino et al. 2011; Pearlman 2013; Davenport 2015) in an attempt to voice discontent (Burden and Wichowsky 2014) and influ- ence the political process. To test the observable implications of our theory, we focus on Palestinian citizens of Israel (PCIs), a group of citizens who have long suffered from formal and informal exclusion and dis- crimination (Enos and Gidron 2018; Weiss 2020). In January 2020, several weeks before a third round of successive elections in Israel, Donald Trump declared a new peace plan for the Israeli- Palestinian conflict, which posed a threat to the citizenship status of PCIs residing in the Triangle Area—a cluster of PCI villages adjacent to the western and northern border of the West Bank (Lan- dau and Tibon 2020). We leverage the timing of this threat to citizenship, as well as its differential consequences for PCIs residing in different localities across the country, to identify the effects of a threat of exclusionary policy on minority formal and informal political behavior. We demonstrate that the threat to citizenship imposed by Trump’s proposed policy mobilized PCIs in the Triangle area relative to those outside of the Triangle area in three distinct ways: First, using over 200,000 posts from public Facebook groups and pages, we show that Trump’s announcement was indeed a more salient political event for Triangle residents. Second, turnout in national elections in Palestinian localities subject to a threat on their citizenship was approximately 2.4% higher than in similar, non-threatened localities. Third, recruitment to a growing Arab-Israeli social movement increased in Triangle localities by over 2% following the policy proposal. We make two central contributions to the existing literature. First, we build on recent studies 2 which consider the social effects of exclusionary policies (Fouka 2020; Abdelgadir and Fouka 2020) and provide evidence that the threat of an exclusionary policy, even before it is implemented, can affect minority political behavior. Second, we contribute to the literature on the determinants of turnout (Bryan et al. 2011; Valentino et al. 2011; Burden and Wichowsky 2014; Davenport 2015) and social movement mobilization (Pearlman 2013; Simmons 2016) by focusing on the determinants of minority mobilization. Our evidence suggests that threats of exclusion are a cause of both formal and informal minority political participation. What Do We Know About Exclusion and Political Behavior? A growing literature suggests that exclusionary policies have substantial effects on minority group members’ daily lives. Recent research demonstrates that bans on German language education hindered the assimilation of German Americans, and limited their voluntary participation in the U.S. army efforts during World War I (Fouka 2019). Similarly, the French headscarf ban in 2004 adversely affected Muslim female students’ education and labor market outcomes, while increas- ing both national and religious identification (Abdelgadir and Fouka 2020). Additionally, in the same context as our own study, other research demonstrates how exclusionary legislation (the so- called “nation-state law” that emphasized the Jewish nature of the Israeli state) can increase the perceived legality of discrimination in housing, voting, and hiring (Barak-Corren, Feldman, and Gidron 2020). Despite this, little is known about how such policies might affect minority political partici- pation.1 Early work attributes cross-sectional variation in Latinos’ political knowledge and self- reported turnout to state level exclusionary policy atmospheres (Pantoja, Ramirez, and Segura 2001; Pantoja and Segura 2003). Other research regarding exclusionary policies (operationalized as daily mentions of the Patriot Act in national news outlets), suggests that the effects of exclusion 1Though a robust literature in international relations considers the relationship between exclu- sion from power and violence (e.g. Cederman, Wimmer, and Min(2010), Cederman, Gleditsch, and Buhaug(2013)). 3 are moderated by socioeconomic standings, and that exclusionary policies mainly mobilize edu- cated minorities (Cho, Gimpel, and Wu 2006). These patterns in minority mobilization suggest that exclusionary policies may have a mobilizing effect on minority citizens. Evidence regarding the political effects of perceived discrimination similarly highlights the mobilizing

Load more

  49

Copy Link