Bakke, Kristin M;
Dahl, Marianne;
Rickard, Kit;
(2025)
Conflict exposure and democratic values: Evidence from wartime Ukraine.
Journal of Peace Research
, 62
(5)
pp. 1376-1392.
10.1177/00223433251347769.
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Abstract
How do experiences of violence in war shape ordinary people’s commitment to democratic principles? Wars often lead to a temporary suspension of democratic rights, yet extant research suggests that wartime violence can both strengthen and undermine support for democracy. We argue that these effects vary across different dimensions of democracy. Drawing on public opinion surveys fielded in Ukraine in October 2022 and July 2024, amidst the ongoing war with Russia, we examine how experiences of wartime violence affect people’s commitment to protecting three core liberal democracy principles: minority rights, freedom of speech, and free and fair elections. Our most consistent finding is that individuals who have been physically injured or lost a close family member or friend are less likely to be supportive of safeguarding the protection of minority rights. We find weaker, though still suggestive, evidence that such experiences are also related to attitudes toward freedom of speech. By contrast, experiences of wartime violence do not systematically influence views on safeguarding free and fair elections. These results speak to democratic resilience in Ukraine but underscore the importance of assessing individual democratic principles – rather than democracy in the abstract – as experiences of violence may impact different dimensions of democracy differently.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Conflict exposure and democratic values: Evidence from wartime Ukraine |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1177/00223433251347769 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1177/00223433251347769 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage). |
| Keywords: | Democracy, elections, freedom of speech, minority rights, Ukraine, war |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS > Dept of Political Science |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10217212 |
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