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Seminar series

An ethnocentric peace

Is racialisation behind the liberal public’s resistance to strike democracies?

Add to calendar 2022-05-04 12:30 2022-05-04 14:00 Europe/Rome An ethnocentric peace Sala Europa, Villa Schifanoia and Zoom YYYY-MM-DD
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When

04 May 2022

12:30 - 14:00 CEST

Where

Sala Europa, Villa Schifanoia

and Zoom

Join Brian Rathbun as he discusses his recent research at the Europe in the World seminar series co-organised by the European Governance and Politics and the Global Governance Programmes
Recent studies purport to show the micro foundations of the democratic peace at the level of public opinion. Respondents in survey experiments fielded in the US and UK are less inclined to strike democracies than non-democracies. However, in making decisions about democracies, respondents are likely to make a number of other associations, such as Christianity and whiteness and other perceived attributes of Western culture. As critical race theorists point out, democracy is a racialised concept. In replications of three previous studies, Rathbun shows the association democracy with a white racial composition and a Christian religious affiliation explains a third of the effect of democracy in choosing force and that the preference for attacking non-democracies is driven by a very small subset of the survey sample who embrace distinctly ethnocentric attitudes. We supplement these replications with our own original survey.

Speaker(s):

Brian Rathbun (University of Southern California)

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