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The Role of Communities in the Transmission of Political Values: Evidence from Forced Population Transfers

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 January 2021

Volha Charnysh Open the ORCID record for Volha Charnysh [Opens in a new window]  and
Leonid Peisakhin Open the ORCID record for Leonid Peisakhin [Opens in a new window]
Volha Charnysh*
Affiliation:
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA
Leonid Peisakhin
Affiliation:
New York University-Abu Dhabi, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates
*
*Corresponding author. E-mail: charnysh@mit.edu
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Abstract

This article evaluates the role of community bonds in the long-term transmission of political values. At the end of World War II, Poland's borders shifted westward, and the population from the historical region of Galicia (now partly in Ukraine) was displaced to the territory that Poland acquired from Germany. In a quasi-random process, some migrants settled in their new villages as a majority group, preserving communal ties, while others ended up in the minority. The study leverages this natural experiment of history by surveying the descendants of these Galician migrants. The research design provides an important empirical test of the theorized effect of communities on long-term value transmission, which separates the influence of family and community as two competing and complementary mechanisms. The study finds that respondents in Galicia-majority settlements are now more likely to embrace values associated with Austrian imperial rule and are more similar to respondents whose families avoided displacement.

Keywords

legaciespersistencecommunitycultural valuesforced migrationPolandHabsburg Empire
Type
Article
Information
British Journal of Political Science , Volume 52 , Issue 1 , January 2022 , pp. 238 - 258
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press

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