THE ANTINOMIES OF COLLECTIVE POLITICAL TRAUMA - A PRE-THEORY

Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin's assassination has less of a lasting imp act on the Israeli public's political values, beliefs and attitudes th an might have been anticipated from the magnitude of the event and int ensity of the immediate responses. Why did the assassination have such a short-lived effect? This article considers the puzzle as a specific case of the broader phenomenon of collective political trauma and its consequences for values, beliefs and attitudes held by the mass publi c toward issues that it associates with the traumatic event. The artic le offers six deductively inferred hypotheses that describe, explain a nd link affective, cognitive and behavioral aspects of collectively ex perienced trauma. These hypostheses form a pre-theory explaining the p erseverence of core political cognitions, even in the face of a consid erable challenge to their validity and relevance.