This week we ask how war affects attitudes to democracy. Do people who are directly exposed to the effects of war (like the people of Ukraine) come to cling more tightly to democratic principles, or do they turn away?
In this episode, we explore a crucial yet often overlooked question: how does war affect people’s support for democracy? Around the world, conflicts continue to shape societies and political systems—but the impact on democratic values and attitudes remains complex and contested.
Host Prof Alan Renwick is joined by Kristin Bakke, Professor of Political Science and International Relations at UCL, head of the Conflict and Change research cluster, and a returning guest of the podcast. Together, they discuss new research from Ukraine that sheds light on how exposure to war influences people’s democratic commitments.
Mentioned in this episode:
[00:00:04] Alan Renwick: Hello, this is UCL Uncovering Politics, and this week we ask how war affects attitudes to democracy. Do people who are directly exposed to the effects of war come to clinging more tightly to democratic principles or do they turn away?
Hello, my name is Alan Renwick, and welcome to UCL Uncovering Politics, the podcast of the School of Public Policy and Department of Political Science at University College London.
The question of what makes people more or less likely to support democracy is pressing around the world today. One aspect of that question that maybe receives less attention, concerns the impact of war. Yet multiple wars are alas ongoing. So what impact such conflict has on democratic attitudes, both while war is being waged and thereafter deserves careful attention.
Indeed what that impact might be isn't obvious. On the one hand, we might expect that exposure to war's harms would heighten people's appreciation of the value of peaceful collective decision making. On the other hand, the trauma of war might leave people feeling threatened, leading them to yearn for certainty and tight control.
Well a new study draws on evidence from Ukraine to examine exactly these questions. And I'm delighted to be joined by one of its authors, Kristin Bakke, who is Professor of Political Science and International Relations here in the UCL Department of Political Science. She's also head of our Conflict And Change research cluster, and she's a longstanding friend of the podcast.
Kristin, welcome back to UCL Uncovering Politics, it's great to have you on. And I've given a little bit of a hint in the introduction to this question, but it would be really helpful to hear your, in your own words, um, what's the basic motivation for this study? Why should we be interested in studying democratic attitudes in wartime Ukraine?
[00:02:09] Kristin Bakke: Well, thank you Alan, and thank you for having me on the podcast. I'm excited to be sharing the results of this research with you.
Democracy is really at the heart of this war. For Vladimir Putin, a thriving pluralist democratic Ukraine was a direct challenge, uh, to the system that he's built at home. So a Ukraine that could hold competitive elections, sustain an independent media, begin to root out corruption. Putin was not a fan of this.
So this is why this war has always been about more than NATO and more than territory and borders. Of course, it's about those things too. But this war is an effort to destroy the political and symbolic example that Ukraine sets- the possibility that democracy could take root and succeed on Russia's doorstep. And there are several scholars that argue that this is really what can account for the timing of the full scale invasion in 2022 as opposed to, to before.
And we should remember that by the time of the invasion in 2022, Ukraine ranked among the most rapidly democratising countries in the world. And it was kind of going against the trend of democratic backsliding. And Ukraine was one of the few examples that was going in, you know, clearly in the right direction.
[00:03:24] Alan Renwick: Yeah.
[00:03:25] Kristin Bakke: So Ukrainians, they're, you know, they're fighting not only for their sovereignty and survival and their territory, but also for, for their democracy, right? This is a war that is, you know, fought in the name of democracy as well.
Of course, Ukraine's path to democracy has not necessarily been a straightforward one, as it hardly ever is in any country that is democratising. Now, what we are interested in here, the motivation here really is that war itself brings complications or can bring complications to the path towards democracy or democratisation. Now the biggest threat to democracy in Ukraine, and this is important to emphasise, is of course the invasion itself and the Russian occupation and the lack of freedom in occupied territories, the war crimes that are being committed. That's the biggest threat to Ukraine's democracy.
But for any country that is facing security threats, there is the risk that those threats could foster democratic backsliding, both through government restrictions on democratic rights, and also a shift in value among citizens. So we know that in response to the, you know, to the Russian invasion, the Ukrainian government quickly implemented martial law. This is fairly common in wartime and it's still in place, which means postponed elections and obviously for good reasons. We can just imagine the difficulties of arranging free and fair elections in wartime, you know, in a war torn country.
There's also been tight media oversight, constraints imposed on political competition. So suspension of political parties with ties to Russia. You know, these, and these are efforts taken to, to try to sort of stop Russian disinformation and propaganda. And these are hard choices and offsets, uh, or trade-offs that wartime democracies make when national survival is at stake. So that's the setting in Ukraine and we know that these are not steps that are unique to, you know, Ukraine, a wartime country.
So against this backdrop, we are interested in understanding how ordinary Ukrainians themselves think about democracy, right? So do they see free elections, free speech, and minority rights as principles worth protecting even in the midst of war when there may be very good reasons to impose restrictions on these principles.
And in particular, we're interested in how experiences of violence, which are very widespread in Ukraine now, shape those views and are some democratic principles, kind of more at risk, so to speak, than others, to those experiences of violence.
So that's the motivation when it comes to, Ukraine, but we think this speaks to bigger questions about democratic attitudes in wartime, which empirically we don't know that much about. And again, for good reasons because it's hard to get this kind of data. And as you said at the outset when you introduced our study, we can think of reasons why this would go both ways. So it's, you know, it is a puzzle. Like why, what would war and experiences of violence do to people's experiences or people's views on democracy?
And you know, this is something we care about. Because ultimately the democratic values that people hold, those are important for democratic resilience. And we care about what ordinary people think about democratic principles in wartime because they're the ones who are holding their leaders to account, right? So how committed they are to democracy under the intense pressure of war and violence can tell us something about, you know, the resilience of democracy and potentially what the post-war future might hold.
[00:06:54] Alan Renwick: Hmm. So you said there that we don't know terribly much about this so far. I mean, do we, do we have any existing knowledge? Are there any kind of foundations upon which we can start to build some hunches about what we might look out for here?
[00:07:06] Kristin Bakke: Yeah. Uh, I mean there is. So, I mean, there's quite a bit of work on, uh, well, people's attitudes to democracy, uh, more generally, which are, you know, literatures we can tap into.
There is, there is literature and research on what experiences of violence do to people's views on democracy and sort of principles related to democracy in the aftermath of war. Which again, are also relevant literatures to build on, uh, which we do. And that's where we sort of, you know, start when we, uh, we start thinking about, you know, what our expectations are.
Now, what's one of the things that we, we thought was important and which we also see as a contribution in a way to, to scholarship on sort of democratic attitudes more broadly, is that instead of asking people a broad question, what they think of democracy, kind of in the abstract, we make it more specific by focusing on distinct principles of democracy. So we look, we ask what people think of protecting, you know, free and fair elections, freedom of speech, and the protection of minority rights to make it more concrete.
[00:08:11] Alan Renwick: Mm-hmm.
[00:08:11] Kristin Bakke: And we think that when you... in many studies of democracy, when you ask a fairly broad question, you get quite widespread support for democracy. And we think that being more precise, we might be more better able to capture what people actually think about these more concrete, distinct principles. It becomes something slightly more.
[00:08:31] Alan Renwick: Mm-hmm.
[00:08:32] Kristin Bakke: You know, you can put your finger on it.
[00:08:33] Alan Renwick: And are you thinking potentially also they might, there might be different impacts upon different, uh, principles, different aspects of democracy.
[00:08:40] Kristin Bakke: Yes. Thank you. Absolutely. And that's, you know, another reason, or again a key reason, for why we wanna break this down into three distinct principles to, to explore and see, you know, whether one of them might be more at risk than others.
And we think, uh. Well, let me tell you about what our expectations are.
[00:08:59] Alan Renwick: Yeah, yeah.
[00:08:59] Kristin Bakke: Because we think there might be differences here given, you know, what existing research, tells us. So we have three expectations when it comes to these three principles of democracy that I talked about. So the first expectation we have is about what people think about safeguarding the protection of minority rights. And our expectation here is that experiences of violence are gonna be negatively associated with support for safeguarding the protection of minority rights during war. And this expectation builds on fairly long standing bodies of work in social psychology and on conflict resolution that builds on social identity theory, highlighting the adverse effects that violent experiences can have on attitudes towards the outgroup. So deepening divisions between the ingroup, so your group and the outgroup. And you know, reduce capacity to forgive perpetrators of violence or those associated with it.
Now in the case of Ukraine, the outgroup in question that would be Russians, which is the, and Russians are the largest minority group in Ukraine. Of course, those Russians are not the aggressor. But they might be associated with the aggressor
[00:10:08] Alan Renwick: in people's minds,
[00:10:09] Kristin Bakke: Russia, in people's minds, you know, due to the lang, you know, well, the language first and foremost.
[00:10:12] Alan Renwick: Mm-hmm.
[00:10:12] Kristin Bakke: There's also research suggesting that the effects of violence may have adverse effects beyond the wartime outgroup or the sort of group that is associated with the wartime outgroup, but that these effects may go toward for any outgroup, right?
[00:10:26] Alan Renwick: Mm-hmm.
[00:10:26] Kristin Bakke: So it might deepen divisions between your group and kind of any group. These are effects that can persist for years. So this is the literature we, we then we build on when we suggest that we think that experiences of violence might have an adverse effect on, or might be negatively associated with, people's sort of commitment to the safeguarding, to safeguarding the protection of minority rights in the midst of war.
[00:10:49] Alan Renwick: Yeah.
[00:10:50] Kristin Bakke: Our second expectation is sort of similarly, we expect negative relationship between people's experiences of violence and what they think about the safeguarding of, uh, the principle of freedom of speech in the midst of war.
[00:11:02] Alan Renwick: Mm-hmm.
[00:11:02] Kristin Bakke: And, you know, this builds on research suggesting that people, might be more willing to forego civil liberties, when they're, you know, when they're facing security threats as a means to, you know, strengthen the state's capacity to address those threats. And that's a body of research that we think is relevant for thinking about, you know, what are people gonna think about freedom of speech here? So we're expecting a negative correlation here as well.
[00:11:26] Alan Renwick: Mm-hmm.
[00:11:28] Kristin Bakke: Our expectations are different when it comes to what we think about people's commitment to free and fair elections, and here we suggest that experiences of violence can have either a negative or a positive effect on people's commitment to safeguarding the protection of free and fair elections in the midst of war. And there's a couple of reasons for this.
We know that elections are built on competition between groups. I mean, this is, you know, what elections are. Hence their functioning requires a certain level of trust. Democracy also depends on social capital from networks that bind people together. The body of research that is relevant here suggests that experiences of violence can kind of go either way here. So there's a body of research suggesting that experiences of violence can erode both general trust and political trust, experiences of violence might, might be detrimental to elections by dismantling civic associations and social capital. So that's, you know, why we would expect that experiences of violence have a, you know, negative effect on what people think about safeguarding free and fair elections.
Conversely though there is a body of work and a growing body of work suggesting that experiences of violence might have what we call pro-social effects, enhancing interpersonal and political trust, reinforcing community and political participation, and based on that body of work, we could think that experiences of violence are gonna make people that are more committed to the idea of safeguarding free and fair elections in the midst of war.
[00:13:00] Alan Renwick: Great. Thank you. So you've set out really clearly though the expectations regarding those three different aspects of democracy. I guess we should say just a little bit more maybe about what's doing the explaining. So you're not looking at kind of overall levels of support for these different democratic principles in Ukrainian, the Ukrainian population as a whole, but you're looking at differences between different Ukrainians, depending on whether they have been directly exposed to violence in the course of the war or not.
[00:13:27] Kristin Bakke: Yes. Thank you, Alan. And that's, you know, very nicely put too, how you, you put it there. That's a very good point. So we are interested in, uh, really, you know, variation based on the experiences of violence that people have. And , I think I should maybe take one step back and say that, this research is based on public opinion surveys that we did in wartime Ukraine and we did that in cooperation with the amazing people at the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology. The team led by Natalia Kharchenko. We did a public opinion survey in 2022, and then a survey in 2024, as well. And of course, collecting survey data in a war torn setting is fraught with challenges. These are phone surveys.
[00:14:10] Alan Renwick: Mm-hmm.
[00:14:10] Kristin Bakke: There we also take in a number of steps, to ensure that they're done in an ethical and safe way for everyone in involved. So for example, when, when the enumerators from KIIS calls our potential respondents, they ask, is it safe to talk now? And if it's not safe to talk, then, you know, the interview stops. These are also conducted on, um, uh, these are surveys that are done basically in Ukrainian government controlled areas, right?
[00:14:38] Alan Renwick: Mm-hmm.
[00:14:39] Kristin Bakke: So they're not covering the areas under Russian occupation or the areas where there's, most fighting
[00:14:44] Alan Renwick: mm-hmm.
[00:14:44] Kristin Bakke: At the moment. And I think that's important to keep in mind.
[00:14:47] Alan Renwick: Mm-hmm.
[00:14:48] Kristin Bakke: Now. That said, our data shows that, you know, experiences of violence, even though this is not in the most violent areas are widespread. So we asked a number of questions to try to get at people's experiences of violence. We asked whether they had been physically injured by Russian troops, such as being shot or injured by rocket or artillery fire, whether they had been displaced due to the war, whether they'd lost a family member, a close friend. And whether they had witnessed violence by Russian troops, such as seeing someone being shot or observing rocket or artillery fire in the distance.
And in 2022, in October, 2022, 69% of our sample had encountered at least one of these forms of violence. By July, 2024, that share had risen to 84%. More than half have experienced, by July 2024, had experienced losing and close family member or friend. So experiences of violence, even though these surveys are not committed in areas with active fighting are really widespread here.
[00:15:52] Alan Renwick: Yes. And you've set up there for us the part of the study in terms of how you're measuring the exposure to violence. And then so you also measure the, people's attitudes on these various different aspects of democracy. Is there anything more we should know about the design of the survey before we move into the results? Or can we move straight into the kind of key headline in terms of what you find in the study?
[00:16:16] Kristin Bakke: Well, let me just say a little bit about the outcome variables, how we measure democracy, right?
[00:16:21] Alan Renwick: Yeah. It's really important to understand how you measure these things in order to get a sense of what the study's doing. Yeah.
[00:16:24] Kristin Bakke: Yeah. So we asked people, you know, about their views on distinct democratic principles that we think capture different dimensions of democracy.
[00:16:33] Alan Renwick: Yeah.
[00:16:33] Kristin Bakke: Right? So we asked whether people think that three aspects of the democracy should be safeguarded or ensured during the war with Russia. We asked them about free and fair elections, freedom of speech, and the protection of minority rights, and then people could sort of agree to whether they thought that each of these principles should, uh, on the sort of three point scale that whether they thought that these principles should, uh, be protected in the midst of war.
[00:16:59] Alan Renwick: Yeah. And I guess a crucial thing there is that you're, you are asking them about protecting those principles in the
[00:17:04] Kristin Bakke: Yes.
[00:17:04] Alan Renwick: During the, the period of war.
[00:17:06] Kristin Bakke: Yeah.
[00:17:06] Alan Renwick: So people might kind of remain attached to the principle in general, I guess, but just think that, well, we can't apply that principle in the context of war for whatever.
[00:17:15] Kristin Bakke: Yeah. So we make it clear that this is what you think about these principles in the midst of, in the midst of war. Yeah.
[00:17:21] Alan Renwick: Yeah.
[00:17:21] Kristin Bakke: In the question itself, yes.
[00:17:22] Alan Renwick: Yeah. Great. Thank you. That, no, that's a really important point for us to be clear on. So, yeah, so the big question is what do you find?
[00:17:28] Kristin Bakke: Yeah, so I mean, one just descriptive in terms of what people think about these, you know, principles. There's quite a lot of, there's continuity between 2022 and 2024. The overwhelming majority thinks that freedom of speech and protection, minority rights should be safeguarded, protected during war.
There's more scepticism about free and fair elections. We think this might have to do with feasibility considerations in the sense that in some ways that feasibility considerations of holding free and fair elections might. Even though the question isn't about that might be influencing what people, you know, say about it. Uh.
[00:18:07] Alan Renwick: And people will know presumably that free and fair elections have been suspended in Ukraine during, during the period of war. And presumably that, I mean, they may feel a kind of sense of loyalty, not, not kind of disagreeing with that decision. I, I don't know.
[00:18:19] Kristin Bakke: Yeah. Uh, yeah, no, I think that's a good point. And so for example, in 2022 when we did our survey, then, um, Russia had just organised these not free and fair elections in occupied areas, so people might have had that in mind. In July 2024 there were big debates in Ukraine, also internationally about the postponing presidential elections. So I think that might have influenced, you know, that question. But overall I think just descriptively, you know, what our data tells us is that there is sort of democratic resilience when it comes to people's attitude to democratic, uh, principles.
Now in terms of then the association between experiences of violence and what people think about these different principles of democracy, the headline finding is that experiences of wartime violence, specifically losing a family member or close close friends or being injured yourself are associated with individual's views on ensuring the protection of minority rights and are negatively associated with that. Um.
[00:19:24] Alan Renwick: So experience of violence leads to lower support for maintaining minority rights in the context of of the war.
[00:19:30] Kristin Bakke: Yes. Uh, and that's really the, the, the main finding. So other forms of violence don't seem to matter for any of the principles of democracy. What they, people think about them very much. And there isn't really a consistent or relationship between any experiences of violence and what people think about free and fair elections. There's some evidence that there is an association between being injured yourself and your commitment to ensuring freedom of speech, but that's not a finding that is sort of consistent across various model specifications.
So really the main finding here is that experiences of violence and particularly these very direct experiences of, you know, yourself being injured, losing a family member or friend has an adverse effect on, on, or is negatively associated with your commitment to safeguarding the protection of minority rights. And this really speaks to this mechanism of what violence does to ingroup outgroup relations.
[00:20:27] Alan Renwick: Mm-hmm.
[00:20:27] Kristin Bakke: And again, you know, I think it's important to emphasise that, of course, the wartime outgroup isn't russians in, in, in Ukraine, but the Russians in Ukraine might be associated with the wartime outgroup. We also don't know, by the way, we asked the question, whether the minority sort of group that people have in mind is Russians.
[00:20:47] Alan Renwick: Mm-hmm.
[00:20:47] Kristin Bakke: I think is reasonable to, to think that there might be thinking about Russians given debates at the time and given the context of the war. But there is also, as I said before, research suggesting that, you know, there might be a, due to experiences of violence, there might be a sort of scepticism between, towards out groups more, more generally here.
[00:21:06] Alan Renwick: And I think you, if I remember correctly, you also find that this is a finding that is very much driven by the Ukrainian speakers in the survey respondents in the, rather than by Russian speakers.
[00:21:17] Kristin Bakke: Yes, it is. We should be a little bit careful there because the, the of the size of the Russian speaking sample in the survey. But it is, you know, mainly driven by the Ukrainian speakers.
[00:21:26] Alan Renwick: Yeah. Uh, there, yeah. So, so that, uh, that finding very much fits with the hypothesis
[00:21:32] Kristin Bakke: Yes.
[00:21:32] Alan Renwick: On the impact of exposure to violence on attitudes to minority rights. And I guess also the finding relating to attitudes to free and fair elections fits with your hypothesis because you were thinking, well, it could go either way.
[00:21:44] Kristin Bakke: Yeah.
[00:21:44] Alan Renwick: And in fact you do kind of suggest that maybe these different things do balance each other, right?
[00:21:48] Kristin Bakke: Yeah. Yes. Exactly. So that's, that wasn't then so surprising that we don't, there isn't the finding. When it came to freedom of speech, that's the one that was a bit more of a puzzling, perhaps given what we would expect based on existing research, uh, why there isn't more of a consistent negative relationship there.
And we thought about this, that it might have to do with again, you know, the question is about the principle, what you think about or, or people's view on, on safeguarding the protection of freedoms of speech in the midst the war. And people might be thinking differently of this depending on who they have in mind, in the sense that, well, maybe you want to restrict some people's freedom of speech, but it's also about your freedom of speech, right?
[00:22:36] Alan Renwick: Yeah.
[00:22:37] Kristin Bakke: So I mean, it's easy to say in retrospect that, oh, we wish we had been clear about, you know, freedom of speech for everyone here. But you know, we just asked about this as a general principle, so we are not entirely sure what it is that's why we're not having that finding there, or having the finding we would expect based on the literature there. But we think it might be because people are thinking about both our own freedom of speech, but you know, it could also be about other people's freedom of speech.
[00:23:06] Alan Renwick: Yeah. And I guess I might have a hunch, and perhaps some of our listeners might have a hunch that in some ways exposure to war, and particularly exposure to a war that is a war about democracy, might increase people's attachment to at least some democratic principles. And maybe people would accept that, well, you need to suspend things to some degree during war.
[00:23:28] Kristin Bakke: Yeah.
[00:23:29] Alan Renwick: But that people would come to believe more strongly in some ways in the importance of democratic principles when this fight
[00:23:37] Kristin Bakke: Yeah.
[00:23:38] Alan Renwick: For democracy, fundamentally, in this war, as you said at the start.
[00:23:41] Kristin Bakke: Yeah.
[00:23:41] Alan Renwick: Um, is, is taking place.
[00:23:43] Kristin Bakke: Yeah. I mean, and there is, there are others who have, have looked at this. So, you know, I said before, there isn't that much research looking at what people think about democracy in the midst of war, but there actually is in Ukraine, others who have also looked at that in, in this ongoing war.
So, um, in a study, recent study by Alexseev and Dembitskyi, they argue that because this war, or because it's a war fought, you know, between a democratic Ukraine and a perpetrator Russia, that is not democratic, the fact that, you know, the, the perpetrator is not democratic is then gonna reinforce people's commitment to democracy to their own state.
[00:24:22] Alan Renwick: Yeah, but I guess we wouldn't necessarily expect that effect to be stronger among people who have had the most direct experience of violence, which is what you're focusing on. So there are different kinds of mechanisms operating here, perhaps?
[00:24:32] Kristin Bakke: And we think that it's important to sort of break democracy down into these distinct principles. And in fact, if we hadn't done that, we wouldn't be able to see the fact that there are actually differences here depending on, you know, are you looking at protection of minority rights, freedom of speech, or what people think of safeguarding free and fair elections.
[00:24:49] Alan Renwick: Yeah, really interesting.
[00:24:51] Kristin Bakke: Yeah, because I mean, really I think the, as I said, the headline finding is this negative association between some experiences of violence and what people think about the protection of minority rights. Which is something to obviously think about for the future, as we don't know if it's gonna be a challenge or if it is a concern, potentially it is.
But I think the, the findings also offers a great deal of optimism in the sense that a much more pessimistic scenario would be that experiences of violence, any kind of experiences of violence, would lead to erosion of support for, for every kind of democratic principle, right? Which is not what we're finding.
So again, I think these findings really speak to the democratic resilience in Ukraine, where you have really widespread experiences of violence and you know, we're not finding that all aspects of democracy are affected by those experiences of violence. And I think that is an optimistic message.
[00:25:39] Alan Renwick: Yeah.
[00:25:40] Kristin Bakke: Uh, uh here.
[00:25:41] Alan Renwick: Yeah. Yeah. So that's really interesting. So you are emphasising there are some of the implications of this research for what we might be able to say about the future in Ukraine. Um, are there, are there other implications for elsewhere beyond Ukraine? I mean, should we think that these findings might generalise to other settings? Is, have you had a chance to think at all about that kind of wider aspect of generalisability?
[00:26:05] Kristin Bakke: So I think that's a very good question. Of course, as political scientists, we always care about the generalisability of our findings. Um, I mean, we certainly think that this would be something that is applicable to settings where the wartime aggressor is also associated with another group,
[00:26:26] Alan Renwick: Uhhuh
[00:26:26] Kristin Bakke: minority group within the country.
[00:26:28] Alan Renwick: Mm-hmm.
[00:26:29] Kristin Bakke: We also think that this is something that potentially applies to civil war settings where you have, where you often have different, well, where you have different groups within the country pitted against one another. And in fact, much of the literature we draw on is from civil war settings.
But really we haven't, you know, we've only looked at this in the context of Ukraine in this study, so I think we should be very clear on that. We're hoping based, you know, you said earlier that maybe this has implications for the postwar era. And of course, this is one of the motivations that we think it might be important to see what happens in wartime for being able to think about what will the post-war future look like? We don't know that, right?
[00:27:10] Alan Renwick: Yeah, of course. Yeah.
[00:27:10] Kristin Bakke: Of course I like, like most others, hope that this horrible war will come to an end soon. And my hope is that the work we've done on wartime Ukraine can turn into a project on post-war
[00:27:23] Alan Renwick: Yes.
[00:27:23] Kristin Bakke: Ukraine. Where we really then can, you know, look at some of these questions in the post-war era and see is there a continuity between what people think about these specific principles about democracy in wartime and what the thoughts are on those principle after war, because that's something I. I think we don't know very much, uh, about.
[00:27:44] Alan Renwick: Well, Kristin, let us all hope that you can do that, the research primarily of course. Because that will mean that the war is over.
[00:27:52] Kristin Bakke: Yes.
[00:27:52] Alan Renwick: And hopefully democracy in, in, in Ukraine is being fully restored.
[00:27:56] Kristin Bakke: Yes.
[00:27:57] Alan Renwick: And uh, Ukraine is progressing towards a brighter future.
[00:28:00] Kristin Bakke: Yes.
[00:28:00] Alan Renwick: But thank you so much for sharing this research with us today. It's, uh, such an important piece of work and really interesting to hear you talking about it. So thank you.
[00:28:08] Kristin Bakke: Thank you.
[00:28:10] Alan Renwick: We have been discussing the article, Conflict exposure and democratic values: Evidence from wartime Ukraine by Kristin M. Bakke, Marianne Dahl and Kit Rickard recently published in the Journal of Peace Research and in fact, the article is part of a special issue of that journal on political violence in democracies, which contains a really diverse set of pieces on many aspects of that overall topic. It's, um, well worth taking a look into. And we will as ever put details in the show notes for this episode.
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I am Alan Renwick. This episode was produced by Eleanor Kingwell-Banham and Kaiser Kang. Our theme music is written and performed by John Mann.
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