The Consequences of Victimization on Political Identities. Evidence from Spain

Trabajo presentado a la conferencia "The Behavioural and Cultural Foundations and Consequences of Violence" celebrada en Lisboa en 2010.This article explores the impact of war-related traumatic experiences on political identities and political behavior by exploring different pieces of empirical evidence from the Spanish Civil War (1936–39), the Franco dictatorship (1939–75), and its aftermath. On one hand, the author analyzes semistructured interviews of survivors of the civil war and the dictatorship; on the other hand, she assesses data from a specialized survey implemented on a representative sample of the Spanish population. The analyses broadly suggest that, controlling for family leanings during the civil war, victimization experiences during the civil war and the subsequent dictatorship lead to the rejection of the perpetrators’ identities along the political cleavage that was salient during the war (i.e., left–right). The survey analysis also indicates that (1) although grudges related to severe wartime violations are transmitted through generations, moderate wartime violations do not have such a long-term political impact; (2) the political effects of victimization do not increase with proximity to the traumatic events (i.e., age); and (3) victimization experiences do not have a significant impact on identities along cleavages that were not salient during the war (i.e., center–periphery).The author(s) declares the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas (CIS), of the Spanish Ministry of the Presidency, has provided funding for the project with the Beca de Finalización de Tesis Doctorales and the Módulo de Encuesta grant. The research in this article has also benefited from funding from the MacMillan Center Dissertation Grant, the Leitner Program in International and Comparative Political Economy Research Grant, and the Leylan Fellowship in the Social Sciences, at Yale University.Peer Reviewe