Miceal Canavan

Why do some publics engage deeply with distant conflicts absent direct ethnic or strategic ties? Existing explanations emphasise geopolitical ties, demographics, or elite cues, but these cannot account for the Republic of Ireland’s consistent pro-Palestinian stance, exceptional in Western Europe and central in shaping Irish state behaviour, international coalitions, and bilateral relations. We argue that historical narratives – particularly those rooted in anticolonial struggle – provide cognitive and affective mechanisms that shape public attitudes to foreign conflict. Using novel survey measures and open questions on a representative sample of Irish respondents (1547), we find that sympathy for Palestinians is broad-based, deeply held, and closely tied to perceptions of Irish historical oppression and unity. These results hold after accounting for ideology and party cues. Given its prominence in public debate, we also test antisemitism as an explanation. We find low levels of antisemitism and higher levels of Islamophobia, indicating that general pro-Palestinian sympathy is driven neither by prejudice toward Jews nor particular affinity toward Muslims. Open-ended responses show Irish respondents spontaneously draw analogies between Ireland’s colonial past and the Palestinian experience. Our findings highlight the long shadow of national history in shaping contemporary foreign policy attitudes.

Recent research highlights the significant potential of ChatGPT for text annotation in social science research. However, ChatGPT is a closed-source product, which has major drawbacks with regards to transparency, reproducibility, cost, and data protection. Recent advances in open-source (OS) large language models (LLMs) offer an alternative without these drawbacks. Thus, it is important to evaluate the performance of OS LLMs relative to ChatGPT and standard approaches to supervised machine learning classification. We conduct a systematic comparative evaluation of the performance of a range of OS LLMs alongside ChatGPT, using both zero- and few-shot learning as well as generic and custom prompts, with results compared with supervised classification models. Using a new dataset of tweets from US news media and focusing on simple binary text annotation tasks, we find significant variation in the performance of ChatGPT and OS models across the tasks and that the supervised classifier using DistilBERT generally outperforms both. Given the unreliable performance of ChatGPT and the significant challenges it poses to Open Science, we advise caution when using ChatGPT for substantive text annotation tasks.

Curfews are commonly used by governments to control restive populations during conflict, but are they effective? Although the primary goal for governments is to increase military advantage, they also cause significant disruptions to civilian life which may provoke a backlash. In this study, we analyze the effect of curfews on public attitudes and rebel attacks in Turkey. Exploiting the closeness of two national elections and the implementation of curfews between these elections, we employ novel data in a difference-in-difference analysis to examine effects on voting and violence. Our results show that curfews provoke a dual backlash effect. First, they decrease support for the ruling party and increase support for Kurdish and Turkish national opposition parties in the areas where they are implemented. Second, they increase the number of rebel attacks in the areas that experience a curfew. This paper provides robust evidence for the backlash effects of indiscriminate non-violent tactics.

National identity remains one of the most potent forces in global politics, yet surprisingly little is known about processes of national identity formation and change. This article argues that national identity preferences are susceptible to fluctuations in group status and distance but constrained by conflict experience and socialization. Integrating research on conflict socialization with social identity theory, we hypothesize that growing up during violent intergroup conflict socializes individuals into identities and attitudes which are durable to significant changes. Conversely, the identity preferences of those who grow up during relative peace are more malleable and likely to change due to significant events which affect perception of group identities. Exploiting the unique political context in Northern Ireland, where individuals can legally choose to identify as Irish, British, or both, we use a diff-in-diff approach to estimate national identity preferences of individuals before and after the EU referendum. The results show that 20% of Protestants who did not experience conflict shifted from British towards Irish identity after the referendum. However, for those who experienced violent intergroup conflict, there is a ‘durable distance’ between groups which constrains identity change irrespective of fluctuations in status. The results have important implications for our understanding of national identity, particularly in post-conflict societies.

In recent years, a record number of people have been forcibly displaced or migrated due to conflict. Whilst established political science research suggests that displaced communities are an added risk factor for conflict due to their support for extreme co-ethnic political parties and movements, this has been challenged by recent research which shows that migrants can be a moderating force. We offer a potential reconciliation of these divergent findings by distinguishing between first- and second-generation migrants. Due to their relative lack of conflict exposure, second-generation migrants will have significantly less support for co-ethnic political parties than first-generation migrants and those who remain. We test our argument using granular survey data comparing Kurds who migrated out of the conflict zone in Turkey with those who remained. The results support our theoretical framework and have important implications for our understanding of migrant attitudes and the long-term effects of conflict exposure.