Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Previous studies on political tolerance have succeeded in identifying strong individual-level predictors of tolerant citizens. However, this is an area of research that suffers from a serious lack of cross-national models of political tolerance from a macro-level perspective. This absence is particularly notable in that previous comparative studies have shown substantial variation in tolerance levels across countries, yet almost no effort has been made to understand the causes of this variation beyond the use of individual-level variables. In this paper, I fill this gap by demonstrating the impact of aggregate internal threat levels on political tolerance levels across 36 countries after accounting for other leading predictors of this attitude. Using cross-national survey data from the 1995-1997 World Values Survey and multi-level modeling techniques, I show that high levels of societal threat, such as insurgency, are negatively associated with political tolerance. Specifically, I find that individuals in states dealing with insurgency groups are much less likely to tolerate unpopular groups than those without such exposure. My paper demonstrates that the threat environment of a state reverberates to the domestic level by influencing individuals? decision to tolerate.