Research

How do social ties between administrators and defendants affect the implementation of personnel transitional justice policies? To address issues of inherited personnel, countries undergoing transitions from autocratic rule frequently implement mechanisms like purges or criminal trials. While a considerable number of studies investigates the consequences of these policies, less is known about factors that shape their implementation. Building on insights from administration research, I analyze how differences in social ties shape the outcomes of a mass purge by drawing on data of approx. 50000 denazification trials from British occupied Nazi Germany. I investigate the effects of two different forms of ties: social identity and networks. I leverage variation regarding the level of ties between administrators and defendants resulting from the delegation of denazification to German authorities and defendants' different migratory backgrounds. My results point to an ambivalent effect of ties in the context of transitional justice policies: while identity ties lead to more lenient ruling, network ties seem to have the opposite effect. The study's findings shed new light on transitional justice and the persistence of political personnel in the shadow of dictatorship.

Prior research suggests that punitive transitional justice (TJ) may foster a sense of collective exoneration among members of perpetrator groups, potentially reducing support for remembrance of ingroup atrocities in the long-term. We employ a two-part empirical strategy to test this potential “hidden cost’’ of TJ in Germany: a vignette experiment manipulating perceptions of the extent of the denazification process and an observational analysis exploiting variance in denazification intensity across occupation zones. Our results reveal that while perceptions of comprehensive Nazi accountability translate into a belief that the entire German in-group has been held accountable, these perceptions do not affect attitudes towards ongoing commemoration or responsibility towards victim groups. Our robust null finding demonstrates that perceptions of justice being served do not undermine support for historical closure on mass violence. These results contribute to the broader literature on TJ’s long-term attitudinal impacts and the determinants of support for historical remembrance, emphasizing the enduring importance of moral over legal perceptions of accountability.

How do voters react to challenges of collective memories? We study the controversial "Wehrmacht exhibition" (1995–1999), which exposed the German public to graphic evidence challenging the ``myth of the clean Wehrmacht'' - the false narrative that only the SS, not the military, systematically committed war crimes and perpetrated the Holocaust. To study the exhibition's effects, we leverage survey data of over 830,000 voters in a staggered difference-in-differences setup. We complement this analysis with evidence from over 1,200 letters to the editor, an original survey of Germans born around the end of WWII, and interviews with public figures who spoke at exhibition openings. We find that the exhibition triggered political backlash, particularly among the children of WWII soldiers. However, this backlash was localized and short-lived. We also show that the exhibition effectively shifted public discourse on the Wehrmacht, demonstrating that memory entrepreneurs can overturn self-serving narratives without lasting political repercussions.

How does right-wing terrorism affect electoral support for populist radical right parties (PRRP)? Recent research has produced contrary answers to this question. We argue that only high-profile attacks, whose motives and targets mirror PRRPs’ nativist agenda are likely to generate a media backlash that dampens electoral support for PRRPs. We test this argu- ment combining high-frequency survey and social media data with a natural and survey experimental design. We find that right-wing terror reduced support for the right-wing populist party Alternative für Deutschland after one of the most intense nativist attacks in recent German history. A case comparison with three other high-profile attacks and an analysis of all 98 fatal right-wing attacks in Germany between 1990 and 2020 support our argument. Our findings help to understand how political violence triggers partisan detach- ment and have important implications for media responsibility in the aftermath of terrorist attacks.

Measuring regime support in closed autocracies is notoriously challenging due to preference falsification, state censorship, and pervasive propaganda. We introduce a novel behavioral measure of regime loyalty based on subtle expressions of allegiance in soldier obituaries published in Nazi Germany between 1939 and 1945. Our empirical analysis draws on a large-scale dataset of over one million scanned pages from roughly 160,000 newspaper issues across 260 unique local news outlets. Using Large Language Models for OCR and data labeling, we detect expressions of regime support, such as praise for Hitler, National Socialism, or the Fatherland, in approximately 600,000 obituaries. Our approach yields the first spatially and temporally granular measure of Nazi regime support during World War II. Our descriptive findings nuance the prevailing historical consensus: we find that regime loyalty began to erode immediately following the 1941 invasion of the Soviet Union, not after the Battle of Stalingrad. By contrast, militaristic rhetoric emphasizing soldiers' heroism persisted at high levels throughout the war.

How do voters respond to information about corruption? Research investigating electoral responses to corruption has thus far generated mixed results and research in this area generally faces a number of methodological problems. While observational studies linking aggregate corruption levels and political behavior usually raise concerns about endogeneity, experimental methods may suffer from problems like social desirability bias or a lack of external validity. In this paper, I bypass these issues by analyzing a natural experiment generated by a corruption scandal around the procurement of face masks during the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany. I exploit the differential exposure to the corruption scandal of mail and ballot-box voters prior to a major regional election in a difference-in-differences design. Comparing electoral outcomes across mail and ballot-box electorates in 1109 municipalities over time, I find that corruption leads to a reduction of the affected party's vote share of approximately 5% in the exposed electorate. Furthermore, I find similar effects for the party's coalition partner indicating that corruption may produce negative spillovers for other incumbent parties. This study sheds new light on corruption and voting behavior by showing that misconduct by public officials can produce substantive electoral responses that have the potential to move well beyond an affected party.