Disadvantaged residents in contested cities often mistrust and resist official authorities due to historical deprivation. However, their urgent needs compel them to approach municipal bodies, both formally and informally, exhibiting ‘flexible compliance’. Through interviews with Palestinians and a public opinion survey in Jerusalem, we analysed the preferences of Jewish-Israeli and Palestinian residents for public goods provision. Results indicate that Palestinian residents prefer unofficial institutions, but this varies by location. Inner-city and outer-city East Jerusalem residents prefer the municipal government, while those beyond the separation wall favour the community councils. We elucidate flexible compliance and propose municipal tools to address it.

This study explores the prioritization of urban identity over national identity in the context of the global city. Scholars have extensively discussed the fragmentation of national identity among individuals in the globalized world, and the relative proliferation of other communal identities, whether more cosmopolitan or place-based. As globalization gradually erodes the cultural distinctiveness of nation states, cities are revealed as arenas within which inhabitants nurture a particular collective character, which is used as an attractive source of local, communal belonging. Global cities, in particular, are a compelling case to inquire into the interplay between national and urban identity. Due to their relative independence vis-à-vis the state, the global city can promote the values shared by inhabitants while constituting significant competition for nation-based self-determination and providing a unique source of urban identity that is simultaneously cosmopolitan and place-based.

In this paper we ask whether city-zens living in highly globalized cities are more likely to prioritize their urban identity over their national identity. Utilizing the GaWC Index of cities’ globalization levels, we analyze the results of an original survey conducted among residents of six European cities: Paris, Madrid, Barcelona, Berlin, Utrecht and Glasgow. Our empirical evidence supports the hypothesis that in globalized cities a higher level of globalism accords with a more explicit tendency to prioritize urban identity over national identity. In conclusion, we interpret this evidence as an identities trade-off that challenges the coexistence of urban and national identities within globalized cities, discussing its implications for future studies of contemporary politics.

What is the impact of uncommon but notable violent acts on conflict dynamics? We analyze the impact of the murder of a Palestinian child on the broader dynamics of Israeli-Palestinian violence in Jerusalem. By using novel micro-level event data and utilizing Discrete Fourier Transform and Bayesian Poisson Change Point Analysis, we compare the impact of the murder to that of other lethal but more typical Israeli-Palestinian events. We demonstrate that the murder had a large and durable impact on the average number of daily riots in Jerusalem, whereas the other events caused smaller, short-term effects. We demonstrate that scholars should devote more attention to the analysis of atypical violent acts and indicate a set of tools for conducting such analyses.

How is the electoral behavior of minorities shaped by past violence? Recent studies found that displacement increases hostility between perpetrators and displaced individuals, but there has been paltry research on members of surviving communities. We argue that the latter exhibit the opposite pattern because of their different condition. Violence will cause cross-generational vulnerability, fear and risk-aversion—leading the surviving communities to seek protection and avoid conflict by signalling loyalty and rejecting nationalist movements. In their situation as an excluded minority in the perpetrators’ state, they will be more likely to vote for out-group parties. Exploiting exogenous battlefield dynamics that created inter-regional variation in the Palestinian exodus (1947–1949), microlevel measurements that capture the damage of violence, and an original longitudinal data set, we show that Palestinian villages in Israel more severely impacted by the 1948 war have a much higher vote share to Jewish parties even 70 years later. Survey evidence further supports our theory, revealing that this pattern exists only for members of the surviving communities, and not among displaced individuals. The findings shed new light on the complex social relations that guide political decision-making in post-war settings and divided societies that suffer from protracted conflicts.

How does living on property taken from others affect voting behavior? Recent studies have argued that benefiting from historical violence leads to support for the far right. We extend this fledgling literature with new theoretical insights and original data from Israel, using case-specific variation in the nature of displacement to uncover heterogeneous treatment effects. Exploiting the coercion during the settlement of Jewish migrants on rural lands following the 1948 war, we show that living on lands taken from Palestinians consistently led to hawkish right-wing voting—even 70 years after the violence occurred and despite the widespread rejection of guilt over that violence. We also show that exposure to the ruins of the displaced villages increased right-wing voting and that the impact of intergroup contact is divergent: it decreased intolerant voting in most villages but increased it among Jewish communities that reside on violently taken land. Our results are robust when matching is used to account for several controls and spatiotemporal dependencies.

Violently contested cities are at the heart of ethnonational conflicts, and their final status is often a central issue for peace negotiations. These negotiations, typically led by national politicians and diplomats, include little, if any, representation of local voices, which are often fundamentally different from those of state-centric actors. This article integrates the seeing like a city theoretical approach with the literature on urban peacebuilding and asks: How is seeing peace like a city different from seeing peace like a state? and whether the visions of local grassroots leaders are complementary or contradictory to the models that national decision-makers propose for cities. We analyse the case study of Jerusalem using historical analysis, public opinion surveys, and in-depth interviews. Our findings show the distinction between the focus of state-centric processes on ‘rigid’ issues (e.g., security and sovereignty) and the focus of city-centric processes on ‘soft’ issues (e.g., tolerance and daily life).

In recent years, there has been a significant increase in the number of East Jerusalem Palestinian students studying at Israeli higher education institutions in Israel and in preacademic preparatory programs. This study examines how spontaneous encounters with Jewish students while attending an Israeli academic institution are associated with young East Jerusalem Palestinian students’ attitudes toward the integration of East Jerusalem Palestinians into the city of Jerusalem and cooperation with Israeli Jews. We analyze the responses to an online survey of 106 East Jerusalem Palestinian students attending a 1-year preparatory program at an Israeli academic institute. We find that Palestinian students who report spontaneous contact with Jewish students on campus during the year express more favorable attitudes toward the integration of East Jerusalem Palestinians into the city of Jerusalem and more positive attitudes toward Jewish Israelis in general. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)

Do the leaders of minority communities in divided cities influence group members’ expressed willingness to engage politically with rival groups? Studies typically link group members’ willingness to engage with rival groups to direct contact between individuals from opposing groups. However, such contact is problematic in divided cities, wherein opportunities to interact are scarce and frowned upon. Focusing on the contested urban space of Jerusalem, we find indications that the diverse nature of community leadership in East Jerusalem can influence Palestinian residents’ attitudes towards political engagement with Israeli authorities via municipal elections. The ‘middlemen’ role can explain community leaders’ influence in divided cities. They facilitate indirect contact between their constituents and the other group’s members or institutions. Our analysis employs original data from a public opinion survey conducted among Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem immediately prior to the Jerusalem 2018 municipal elections. It has ramifications regarding urban governance for other divided cities.

This study explores one of the least studied components of forced migrants’ journeys—the internal political conditions of the host/transit countries. Using the social navigation approach, we demonstrate how these conditions influence the progress or halt of migration journeys of asylum seekers. We interviewed asylum seekers from Eritrea and Sudan about their journey from their country of origin. Based on these life stories, we derived three salient political themes affecting their journeys: state political instability, the state of freedoms, and lasting persecution. We conclude with insights into the influence of the political component along the journey.

Does social cohesion explain variation in violence within divided cities? In line with insights drawn from the ethnic politics, criminology and urban geography literature we suggest that explaining variation in intergroup violence is not possible by relying on motivational elements alone, and attention to social cohesion is required as well. While cohesion can facilitate collective action that aids violent mobilization, it can also strengthen social order that contributes to the group’s capability to control and prevent unrest. We test these relationships using an application of a latent variable model to an integration of survey results, crime data and expert-coded data in order to measure cohesion in East Jerusalem neighborhoods. We then analyze its impact on riots using three original geolocated datasets recording violence in the neighborhoods between the years 2013 and 2015. Our results reveal that even with controls for economic and political determinants of violence, as well as for spatial clustering and temporal explanations, neighborhood-level social cohesion is a robust explanatory variable that negatively correlates with riots.