DOES SOCIAL AND POLITICAL INSTABILITY INCREASE INTOLERANCE? PREDICTING LEVELS OF ANTI-SEMITISM ACROSS 101 COUNTRIES

Anti-Semitism, hostility towards or the maltreatment of Jews, is one of the oldest forms of intolerance. Scholars from a variety of traditions have examined anti-Semitism and its drivers. This project interrogates the drivers of anti-Semitism in a new way. It looks at how anti-Semitism is related to an under-examined variable, country stability. I hypothesize that feelings of instability will drive individuals and groups towards espousing anti-Semitic attitudes. Particular attention is paid to political instability as manifested in immigration levels, regime duration, conflict and terrorism. Three hypotheses are tested through the use of OLS regression and a dataset that brings together 2014 cross-national data on anti-Semitic attitudes with country-level variables that act as indirect indicators of political instability. Major findings include statistically significant impacts of (1) a country’s presence in the Middle East North Africa (MENA) region (2) a regime’s duration and (3) terrorism outside of the MENA region on levels of anti-Semitic attitudes. This research has implications for understanding the ongoing study of the drivers of anti-Semitism, particularly country-level drivers