Inherited wealth has often been accumulated under circumstances seen as undeserving by present-day standards. However, there is surprisingly little knowledge about the political consequences of wealth's history. We argue that illegitimate accumulation nurtures opposition and calls for redistribution, even after multiple generations. To test our theory, we conduct a survey in Germany, where many wealthy business owners inherited companies that made large fortunes during one of the darkest episodes of human history, the Nazi regime of 1933-1945. We demonstrate with a vignette experiment that individuals perceive heirs of businesses that cooperated with the Nazi regime as less deserving than other similar heirs, and are more likely to support the targeted redistribution of such inherited business wealth. Therefore, undeservingness can be inherited and passed on from one generation to another. These results align with general views and attitudes about the German economy. Our findings add to studies on the historical origins of public opinion as well as deservingness by showing how illegitimate wealth accumulation affects political attitudes across generations.

[PREREGISTRATION]

Political and economic elites often warn that taxes on the rich impair economic growth. Although such warnings have a long tradition in elite discourse and election campaigns, what the public believes about the effects of progressive taxation remains surprisingly understudied. This omission limits our understanding of a basic democratic mechanism, the congruence of elite and mass opinion. To close this gap, we employ a conjoint experiment during the last German national election on a representative quota sample. Participants compare policy packages that entail changes in income, inheritance, and corporate taxes  and evaluate their impact on equality and growth. We find no evidence that the public believes in a trade-off between equality and growth. Instead participants believe that both go hand in hand, particularly for income and wealth taxation. Furthermore, such beliefs do not vary by ideology or economic status. Our findings may help to shape a more consensual approach to progressive taxation that emphasizes positive synergies between economic growth and greater equality.

[PREREGISTRATION]

Universal Basic Income (UBI) constitutes a novel and radical policy proposal that promises to address a number of economic challenges in advanced democracies. Previous studies have shown that support for UBI is generally high but political debates remain controversial and the political viability of UBI limited. We move beyond the existing literature to study these controversies from the perspective of political polarization. In addition to studying \textit{who} the proponents and opponents of UBI are, we explore how both sides differ in \textit{what} UBI they want and \textit{why}. We conduct a survey in the context of an active local UBI campaign and use an extended conjoint design to study preference heterogeneity and an open-ended survey question to capture justifications without imposing constraints. Our findings show how disagreements about UBI are rooted in divergent attitudes and arguments but also point towards common ground that could increase the political viability of UBI.

Global inequality and international migration are deeply rooted in the history of European colonialism. However, the impact of this legacy on contemporary public opinion about international politics remains underexplored. Drawing on studies of intergroup hostility, I argue that exposing descendants of perpetrator groups to information about past transgressions, such as violent and exploitative colonization, can induce defensiveness and increase outgroup bias. This argument is supported by attitudinal and behavioral evidence from a representative survey experiment (n=1,680) in Germany—a country only beginning to grapple with its colonial past. The findings demonstrate that raising awareness of historical intergroup hostilities can, under certain circumstances, produce a backlash rather than facilitate reconciliation.

Memory policies that seek to de-commemorate majority group figures often spark controversy. Existing research presents conflicting evidence on the political consequences, with some attesting to a backlash effect and others to progressive shifts in public opinion. We propose that such differences can arise from distinct effects at different stages of the policy cycle. Focusing on the pre-adoption stage, we argue that de-commemoration proposals evoke collective guilt over historical injustices, mobilizing support for reparative policies, particularly among left-leaning individuals. To test this, we study a controversial street-renaming proposal in Berlin targeting anti-Semitic figures. Combining a difference-in-difference analysis of fine-grained election data with a large stratified survey experiment, we find that the proposal reduced support for right-wing parties and bolstered progressive voting, with no evidence of backlash. Emotional mechanisms, particularly heightened historical guilt, explain the observed shifts among ideologically predisposed groups. By highlighting the pre-adoption effects of memory policies, this study contributes to the growing literature on symbolic politics, challenging assumptions about the inevitability of backlash and uncovering the role of emotions in shaping public responses to inclusionary memory.

Christian missions, especially Protestants missions, have been shown to advance long-run education outcomes and gender equality in Africa. However, the mechanisms behind this benign legacy and the contribution of missionary women, who constituted more than half of all Western mission staff, are not well-understood. We compile a new extensive data set on the locations of missions in colonial Africa, including the gender composition of their staff. In combination with contemporary survey data on one million respondents in 29 African countries, we provide evidence of missions' equalizing effects with regards to education and a wide range of female agency outcomes. We document that Protestant missions left no more benign legacy than Catholics, questioning the Protestant exceptionalism highlighted by prior studies. We also document a strong association between missionary women and girls' school enrollment in colonial times but find no evidence of any lasting gendered effects. Post-independence expansion of public education and the secularization of school curricula may have offset persistence of Africa's earliest centers of female education.