Replication Data for: The Role of Communities in the Transmission of Political Values: Evidence from Forced Population Transfers

We evaluate the role of community bonds in the long-term transmission of political values. At the end of WWII, Poland’s borders shifted westward, and the population from the historical region of Galicia (now partly in Ukraine) was displaced to the territory that Poland acquired from Germany. In a quasi-random process some migrants settled in their new villages as a majority group, preserving communal ties, while others ended up in the minority. We leverage this natural experiment of history by surveying the descendants of these Galician migrants. Our research design provides an important empirical test for the theorized effect of communities on long-term value transmission, enabling us to separate the influence of family and community as two competing and complementary mechanisms. We find that respondents in Galicia-majority settlements are today more likely to embrace values associated with Austrian imperial rule and are more similar to respondents whose families avoided displacement.