Exposure to Political Violence and Individual Behavior
EXPOVIBE is a 5-year research project funded by the European Research Council under the prestigious ERC Starting Grant Program. The principal investigator is Professor Arzu KIBRIS of Warwick University, Department of Politics and International Studies. The project is hosted by the University of Warwick in collaboration with Sabancı University (Istanbul, Turkey) as partner institute. The project began in April 2017.
EXPOVIBE explores how exposure to political violence impacts upon the social, economic and political behavior of individuals. It has three legs. The first leg analyzes the association between political and domestic violence. More specifically, the hypothesis that those exposed to political violence are more likely to be perpetrators of domestic violence is tested. The second leg analyzes whether exposure to political violence impacts upon economic behavior and looks into the impact of exposure on a wide array of attitudes and behavior including risk, time and social preferences, savings behavior, employment, career choices and earnings. Finally, the third leg looks into political behavior. More specifically, the associations between exposure to political violence and a wide array of political attitudes and behavior including political participation and support, political tolerance, ideology and voting behavior are analyzed.
To answer these questions, two independent, large-n survey studies were conducted in Turkey in 2019. The first study surveyed 6,384 adult, married Turkish women to study the association between exposure to political violence and intimate partner violence. The second surveyed 5,024 adult Turkish men to study the association between exposure to political violence and social, economic and political behavior.
EXPOVIBE is an innovative project in several respects. First of all, it relies on a natural experiment setting that emanates from the institutional setup in Turkey. Such a setting is extremely valuable for an empirical study because, by removing endogeneity concerns, it allows causal inference. But a natural experiment setting is also very rare. So much so that EXPOVIBE will be the first to take advantage of a natural experiment setting to study the social, economic and political consequences of a civil conflict. Second, EXPOVIBE is designed to simultaneously analyze multiple important questions that concern several disciplines. Relatedly, it will contribute to the much needed understanding of the dynamics and consequences of civil conflicts in very significant and important ways. Such an understanding is crucial if we are to develop effective policies of prevention and recovery for conflict-stricken societies. Third, this will be the first study to analyze the long-term association between exposure to political violence and intimate partner violence against women. Intimate partner violence against women is a very common and serious public health and human rights issue. Consequently, understanding its causes and correlates is of utmost importance. The project is also innovative in its double-angled approach to this important issue from the perspectives of both the possible perpetrators and the victims of intimate partner violence against women. Finally, this study is innovative in terms of the richness of its data. Most existing microlevel studies from conflict areas are marred by the use of small samples of limited representativeness. EXPOVIBE will be analyzing two large-n, representative samples.