17:45 - 20:00
Friday-Panel
Chair/s:
Christoph Steinert
Discussant/s:
Felix Bethke, Barbara Piotrowska
Meeting Room N

Daniel Bischof, Vicente Valentim
Does Banning Extremism Work? Evidence from Employment Bans in Germany

Anna Pauls
When repression signals bad policy

Christoph Steinert
The duration of political imprisonment: Evidence from China

Jamie Gruffydd-jones
Violations across borders: The impacts of American racial discrimination on support for minority rights around the world

Ziyi Wu
Attacking With Their Own Words: The Use of Censored Sources in News by Party Media in China
Does Banning Extremism Work? Evidence from Employment Bans in Germany
Daniel Bischof 1, Vicente Valentim 2
1 University of Zurich | Aarhus University
2 European University Institute

How can states counter growing political extremism? We look at the effect of states persecuting radical individuals by studying the case of the radical decree in Germany. Implemented in 1972, this policy allowed individuals with connections to extremist groups to be banned from working in the public sector. We argue that this policy might have backfired, increasing extremist behavior and reducing voting for the incumbent. Drawing upon a newly collected dataset of individuals targeted by the bans, we run difference-in-differences models to estimate the effect of such bans on the political behavior of German citizens. We also look at the long term effects of the bans by looking at its effects on the subsequent estbalishment of the Green party -- who were the only party campaigning against the ban. In future iterations of the paper, we intend to enrich our findings by contacting and interviewing individuals targeted by the bans. Our findings have implications for the repertoire of policies that states can implement to deter extremist behavior and safeguard democracy.