Abstract
Western societies are increasingly enacting majority nationalism laws to strengthen majority culture. We propose that these laws may alter attitudes about minorities’ equal citizenship with varied impact on majorities and minorities. To explore this issue, we examine the impact of Is-rael’s recently enacted Nation Law on the Jewish majority and the Arab minority. Experimental evidence from before the law’s enactment reveals that both minority and majority respondents perceive the passage of the law as permitting discrimination against the minority in housing, employment, and voting, but the effect on minority respondents’ perceptions is larger. Panel and cross-sectional data from before and after the law’s enactment reveal that the effect on majority respondents was fleeting, whereas the negative impact on minority respondents was stronger and more durable. These findings expose the troubling effects of majority nationalism laws and suggest that law may operate as a prism, expressing different messages to different groups.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 371-401 |
| Number of pages | 31 |
| Journal | Journal of Legal Studies |
| Volume | 51 |
| Issue number | 2 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Jun 2022 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:workshop by the Hebrew University Federmann Center for the Study of Rationality and the Ben Gurion Center on Decision Making and Economic Psychology. We are particularly thankful for the financial support of the Minerva Center for Human Rights, the Cherrick Center for the Study of Zionism, and the Barak Center for Interdisciplinary Legal Research at Hebrew University. Barak-Corren acknowledges the generous funding of the Israeli Science Foundation (grant 19/1487).
Publisher Copyright:
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