Max Schaub

The transfer of power through elections is a cornerstone of democracy. We examine the effect of elections on a key health measure, excess mortality. We argue that electoral turnovers can create frictions that delay policy implementation and thus harm health, especially in times of crisis. Our data come from France, where local elections were held at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic. Combining a conditional-on-observables strategy and a regression discontinuity design to analyze 5,000 electoral decisions, we find strong evidence supporting our theoretical argument. Municipalities where the incumbent mayor was defeated by an opposition candidate experienced 7-9 percentage points higher excess mortality, implemented fewer mask-wearing mandates, and issued significantly fewer emergency orders than municipalities with no turnover. Difference-in-differences analyses on a panel of 101 countries and territories suggest that these findings generalize to other contexts. While crucial to the functioning of democracy, holding elections during emergencies comes at a cost.

Why do military forces target civilians in interstate wars? Modern technology has enabled civilians to transmit targeting information from behind the front lines, posing a threat to occupying forces. This threat is particularly acute in areas within range of long-range weapons. Drawing on theory developed in the context of civil war, we argue that armed actors use violence against civilians to suppress and deter information sharing. We test this theory using geospatial data from the Russian war against Ukraine, employing a variety of analytical strategies, including a treat-control and a staggered difference-in-differences design. Russian-occupied territories within range of Ukrainian artillery experienced seven times higher levels of civilian targeting, with the effect being particularly strong in areas with extensive mobile phone coverage. Our study extends the cooperation-control model from civil wars to interstate wars and highlights the unintended consequences of technological advancement and military aid on civilian populations.

Negative outgroup attitudes are often attributed to perceptions of competition or threat. We propose an alternative source: cultural scripts—interconnected networks of meanings that link particular group identities to negatively connoted phenomena. Evidence comes from three studies on the reactivation of the cultural script of traditional antisemitism in Germany. We begin our analysis by isolating the cultural script through automated analysis of a corpus of antisemitic texts. Next, using survey data collected during the Covid pandemic (n=17,800), we document an increase in antisemitism among Christian believers. This, we argue, is due to the pandemic activating the cultural script of traditional antisemitism, which links Judaism with the spread of disease. By means of an additional survey (n=2,000) and a concept association task, we demonstrate the presence of the cultural script in the minds of Christian believers. Two priming experiments explore how elements of the script can be triggered. Our work demonstrates the deep cultural roots of negative outgroup attitudes and the mechanisms behind their activation.

Regime changes are common around the world. How do newly-established regimes interact with old regime elites? While pre-existing elites can directly challenge the new regime, their human and social capital may also bolster governance, indirectly reducing resistance against new authorities. We study foreign-imposed regime change in post-WWII Poland, tracing the impact of local Polish elites, including nobility, intellectuals, and army officers, on opposition to the Soviet-backed communist regime. We exploit plausibly random variation in Polish officers' wartime deployment and imprisonment for causal identification. While most officers in Nazi captivity survived, those in Soviet captivity largely perished. Leveraging differences in officers' wartime experiences, we find that municipalities with more surviving local elites experienced fewer Solidarność protests in the 1980s. Historical evidence suggests that surviving elites enhanced local economic development and public services, easing grievances against the communist regime. The economically beneficial effects of elite survival can be traced to this day.

No other form of violence targets gender identities and norms as much as sexual violence. What are the effects of victimization and exposure to sexual violence on gender norms? What are the effects of victimization and exposure to sexual violence on gender norms? How enduring are these effects, and how are they transmitted across generations? We seek to answer these questions by examining two of the most extreme cases of known mass wartime sexual violence in Europe: widespread rape following the Soviet occupation of Germany after World War II, and systematic sexual abuse during the Bosnian war in the early 1990s. Using original survey data from three postwar generations spanning 80 years in eastern Germany (n=2,500) and Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH, n=2,000), we examine individual attitudes and perceived social expectations regarding the appropriate roles of men and women. Exposure to wartime sexual violence is high in our sample, with 12% of respondents in Germany and 8% in BiH reporting that a close family member had suffered rape or other forms of sexual violence. Consistent with classic feminist research on the topic, we find that wartime sexual violence reinforces patriarchal gender norms within victims' families. This effect is plausibly driven by social disruption, deteriorating mental health, and high levels of domestic violence within victims' families, as confirmed by additional analyses on family members (n=600 in each country). We validate our results with a list experiment and by with an instrumental variable approach, instrumenting self-reported exposure to wartime sexual violence with proximity to military and internation camps. Our findings confirm the cynical logic of using wartime sexual violence as a weapon to undermine the social fabric, and underscore the importance of interventions to mitigate negative consequences among victims and their descendants.

Introduction Armed conflict severely impacts health, with indirect deaths often exceeding direct casualties by a factor of 2 to 4, disproportionately affecting women and children. Although the magnitude of these effects is well-documented, the mechanisms driving them remain insufficiently understood. This study shifts the focus from supply-side factors, such as the destruction of infrastructure, to demand-side processes, particularly healthcare-seeking behavior, and from broader conflict exposure to individual-level violent victimization.
Methods Data come from a representative survey (N = 3,006) of caregivers of young children in northeastern Nigeria, a region heavily affected by armed insurgency. Unlike previous studies, our survey included dedicated measures of victimization, health-seeking outcomes, and mediating factors within a single instrument, enabling precise measurement and analysis. A matched case-control design (651 cases and 651 controls) was used to assess the impact of individual-level victimization on maternal and child healthcare-seeking behavior, and causal mediation analysis to identify the mechanisms linking victimization to health outcomes.
Results Victimization was widespread, with 21% of respondents (n=651) having experienced a severe form of violence in the past 3 years. While maternal healthcare-seeking behavior appeared unaffected, victimization significantly reduced healthcare-seeking for child health. Children of victimized caregivers were markedly less likely to be fully immunized (OR: 0.43, p<0.001) and to receive care at government health facilities (OR: 0.23, p<0.001). This decline was primarily driven by increased distrust in the health system (PM: 0.42–0.70, p<0.05), stemming from negative experiences during the conflict, particularly health worker absenteeism and victimization by state security forces.
Conclusion Addressing fear and mistrust is key to improving healthcare-seeking in conflict-affected populations. Efforts should focus on providing security for government-run health facilities, reducing violence against civilians by state security forces, and restoring trust in healthcare and state institutions. Future research should explore effective strategies for achieving these objectives.