What Research Tells Us about Political Violence

In the United States, it seems that political violence-which can be broadly understood as acts of violence aimed at individuals or property with the intention of affecting or resisting political, social and/or cultural change-is on the rise, with the assassination attempt of Donald Trump in July just the latest example. While the ideals of the United States have always stressed the need for a peaceful democracy, we cannot avoid the fact that this event was by no means a one-off incident.

From the insurrection on January 6, 2021, to the murder of nine Black parishioners in 2015 at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina; from the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995 to the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and both John F. and Robert Kennedy; and race massacres in Elaine, Arkansas, and Tulsa, Oklahoma, and scores of earlier events, political violence has been an unfortunately common part of life in the United States for a long time.

What is particularly concerning is that the United States has one of the highest rates of fatalities from political violence among developed countries, based on data from the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project, a non-profit, non-governmental agency dedicated to collecting data on political violence around the world. Comparison of the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and 26 of the 27 EU countries (data do not exist for Luxembourg) shows that since 2020, the United States has the second highest rate of fatalities from political violence per person, with one fatality per every 1,076,897 people. Only Greece surpasses the United States during this time period with one fatality per every 357,286 people.

These numbers are disturbing, and likely lead many of us to wonder: What is causing this exceptional violence?

This question has been at the heart of substantial political science and peace science research over the last five decades. The answers researchers have arrived at can help guide us on how to minimize political violence and move towards our goal of creating the fairest and most representative democracy possible.

One of the key findings from this research is that a combination of perceived grievances (e.g., believing the group a person identifies with has been wronged by the government or a different group in society), along with a belief that change is not achievable through normal democratic means (e.g., voting) create the atmosphere for political violence. On top of this, once one person or group of people engage in political violence, the likelihood of retaliatory political violence increases.

Luckily, this spiraling of political violence can be reversed. When opportunities to influence governance and politics become more plentiful, those engaging in violence have a tendency to hit the brakes and stop the violence. Put differently, when representative elections exist, society tends to become more peaceful.

With that information in mind, the United States has a huge problem. Based on 11 indicators of the quality of elections, including whether electoral laws favor larger parties or incumbents and whether electoral boundaries discriminate against some parties or incumbents, among others, experts with the Electoral Integrity Project have concluded that the integrity of US elections lags behind dozens of countries in Europe and North America, and many Asian and African countries. More problematically, according to the the V-Dem Project, which surveys experts on democracy around the world, the United States is becoming less representative and more autocratic.

Specifically, the V-Dem Project indicates that the United States has decreased in the last decade on what they call the "Electoral Democracy Index," which captures the extent to which "clean, free and fair elections" are held, whether residents enjoy "actual freedom of expression," have access to "alternatives sources of information and association," whether men and women are equally empowered to vote, and whether policymaking power is vested in elected officials. Maybe more concerning is that in recent years V-Dem data show that violence around elections in the United States is at its worst level since at least before 1900 (V-Dem data begins in 1900). Further still, voter intimidation by the government in the form of violence and repression has dipped to levels the United States hasn't seen since before the end of Jim Crow.

Increasing fair representation and the operation of democracy in the United States is at the crux of the work of the UCS Center for Science and Democracy. We are using science and research to advocate for real and tangible solutions that will make democracy in the United States fairer and more representative. This should increase the ability of all Americans to participate in governance, reduce the factors that contribute to political violence, and save lives.

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