Unexpected Events, (Un)expected Attitudinal Consequences? Assessing the Impact of Terrorism in Europe Across Three Quasi-Experiments

At the heart of terrorists’ strategy lies the idea to undermine citizens’ support for the political system (Waxman, 2011), which is essentially dangerous for the latter’s stability. Therefore, a rich body of literature evolved around the so-called attitudinal consequences of terrorism. However, this strand of research rarely compares effects across cases, mainly focuses on national attitudes, neglecting supranational ones, like attitudes towards the EU, and only recently started to investigate spill-over effects to other countries. Filling this gap, this paper provides a more systematic attempt to analyze how terrorist attacks influence national and political support for the EU across European countries. The 3/11 Madrid Attack, the assault on Charlie Hebdo, and the November Shootings in Paris in 2015 are employed as natural experiments using an Unexpected Events During Survey Design (UESD) based on Eurobarometer and ESS data. As a theoretical basis, I build on social psychological conceptualizations of attitudes and Easton’s concept of political support, while employing theories on disruptions, emotions and the media’s influence in shaping public opinion. This study contributes to existing work in the field in three ways: First, by looking at three terrorist attacks perpetrated in Western Europe and their consequences on support for the political system in the country directly targeted and potential spill-over effects to other European countries, it provides new insights on the generalizability of attitudinal impacts of terrorism in Europe. Second, by considering the impact of terrorism on national political support and political support for the EU simultaneously, this study sheds light on an area that has been understudied so far. Thereby it gains new insights into the relationship between national and European attitudes and whether terrorists undermine political support on any of the two levels. Third, the narrow focus on political support directly contributes to the debate on whether terrorism is effective in undermining support for a political system and complements the field in this regard. I find significant changes in national and EU support, mainly towards the political regime dimension, varying in size and direction depending on the attack under study. Surprisingly, attitudinal spill-over effects to other countries even exceed the effects found in the countries directly targeted. Also, the findings indicate that the effect on EU support found depends in direction on the respective changes in national political support. These findings emphasize the cross-border and supranational dimension of attitudinal consequences of terrorism and highlight the importance of spill-over effects when it comes to the attitudinal consequences of terrorism. Looking at the panels in your section, I think this paper would fit very nicely into panel 6 "Divided We Fall: terrorism, divisions and political psychology at the extremes".