In the United States, France, and Germany, political violence has been rising. Three factors are salient: Polarization convinces some people that violence is acceptable to keep opponents from power; extreme political parties normalize polarization and violence, leading to attacks from — and against — their supporters; and the democratically disillusioned use violence, not votes, to express themselves. Political violence can be reduced if: 1) leaders insist on nonviolence; 2) governments and politicians support the rule of law, accountability, and equitable policing; 3) voting systems dampen extremism; 4) communities organize across difference against violence; and 5) activists insist on nonviolence within their movements.
How can we reduce political violence? The United States has been asking itself this question since a would-be assassin’s bullet narrowly missed former president Donald Trump at a July 2024 rally, insurrectionists attacked the U.S. Capitol on 6 January 2021, and threats against elections officials and other public servants exploded around the 2020 presidential election.1 The United States is not alone. Political violence has also been rising in other democracies, including France and Germany, both of which saw spikes in violence against local candidates during the recent EU parliamentary elections. What can countries that are currently grappling with political violence learn from the experiences of others that have had to address this problem?
The increasing violence and dangerous rhetoric that the United States and a handful of other wealthy, developed democracies are experiencing stems foremost from a political problem — one with three dimensions: The first is intense political polarization — voters feel that they are in an existential struggle in which their freedom and democracy itself depend on defeating opposing parties. Some voters become so polarized that they are willing to compromise democracy for partisan gain and even to excuse violence perpetrated by their party’s supporters.2 The second is the exacerbation and exploitation of existing polarization by some political leaders to build voter loyalty and increase support. Parties may also flirt with rhetorical or even deeper support for violent groups to intensify us-versus-them sentiments and thereby energize their voting base, intimidate opposing candidates and voters, and pressure election administrators — all to increase the chance of victory. The third and final dimension is the intense disillusionment of some citizens with how the political system is working and with all the major-party options. Such disenchantment can lead citizens to justify violence in hopes of bringing about something — anything — different.
Polarization is clearly central to the problem of political violence. A consortium of scholars working with the U.S. government’s intelligence agencies found that countries with highly polarized politics were among the world’s most politically unstable.3 Other scholars have found correlations between polarization and political violence.4 On the ground, what this means is that in highly polarized societies, even if one partisan camp is far more violent than others, polarization can serve that camp as a weapon of sorts, a justification for further violence.
Yet it is important to note that polarization does not generate violence on its own. In the United States, for instance, emotional polarization has been rising for decades, while modern political violence spiked sharply starting in 2016. Polarization must be harnessed by political and opinion leaders to have this effect.5 Parties that engage in or condone political violence against opponents (and often copartisans with whom they disagree) are an important part of the equation. Such parties featured across Europe during the 1930s and again in Italy during the “years of lead” in the 1970s, and they have long operated in parts of India, Nigeria, and other African countries.6 Today, the rise of extreme far-right parties such as the Alternative for Germany (AfD) and France’s National Rally, has emboldened young neo-Nazis and violent supporters of extremist agendas to act out the violence embodied in some leaders’ rhetoric.7
In the United States, elements within the Republican Party have displayed similar behavior. For example, members of Trump’s campaign apparatus cultivated relationships with militias in the lead-up to the January 6 attack on the Capitol, and some local Republican parties have engaged in outreach to such groups. Trump himself has condoned violence and offered to pardon January 6 rioters convicted of attacking police and property destruction.8
The ways in which extreme parties and polarization interact to generate violence is particularly apparent in Germany, which has seen more than ten-thousand attacks on politicians in the last five years. Not only have the AfD’s violent young supporters assaulted politicians from multiple other parties, but representatives of the AfD itself, more than any other party, have suffered the greatest number of violent attacks. In France, threats from the left and right led to a twelvefold increase in violence against elected officials in 2023 over 2022, and in the weeks before the July 2024 national parliamentary elections, 51 candidates were physically attacked. Previously, in the summer of 2023, the French far left turned to rioting, Molotov cocktails, and arson as protesters demonstrated against police brutality and raising the pension age. While the country’s most far-left party, La France Insoumise, has not supported violence, it has also refused to condemn it.9
Violent Parties, Polarization, and Democratic Disconnection
In the United States, political violence is extremely asymmetric, but nonetheless exists across the political spectrum. Studies from the Global Terrorism Database, Reuters, and the National Institute of Justice, using different methodologies, all confirm that the vast number of violent plots, murders, and ideological attacks have come from the right in recent years, and have targeted not only political opponents on the left but also more moderate politicians on right.10 A much smaller number of such attacks have come from the left (and sometimes target moderates on the left).11 Violent armed protests (against LGBTQ+ rights, for example) are also more prevalent on the right, though skirmishes also occur on the left (including at some pro-Palestinian and Black Lives Matter rallies), often after law enforcement gets involved.12
Finally, there is a portion of the public so disillusioned with “the system,” or in such despair of democracy’s ability to deliver what it desires, that it will justify violence in the name of change. Thus in France, anarchists from outside the party system were major players in the violent yellow-vest protests of 2018–19 and in the 2023 riots. In the United States, the despair and disaffection among the rising generation is perhaps even more worrisome for the future than the polarization and party-catalyzed hate. A recent study found that young people between 18 and 34 are significantly more willing than any other age group to justify killing political officials with whom they disagree, forcibly occupying buildings, harassing opponents online, and armed protest, among other forms of violence and intimidation.13
According to the same study, justifications of violence are strongest from people across all age groups who affiliate with a third party (that is, not Republican or Democratic). Moreover, many who engage in violence seem to forgo peacefully expressing their feelings at the polls: Of the violent protesters arrested in Portland, Oregon, shortly after the 2016 election, for example, at least a third had not voted; another third could not be determined but were not registered in the state.14
To curtail political violence in democracies today, we must begin thinking about it as a problem of democracy itself and to look for lessons from different parts of the world and different moments in time. What can international cases teach us about how to diminish the influence of extremist parties, neutralize the power of polarization, and cultivate hope and belief in the system among the discouraged and dispossessed? Following are five proven pillars.
Leaders must insist on nonviolence. The most direct way to prevent political violence is for politicians, party leaders, and ideologically linked cultural leaders to insist that no one should commit violence — not political leaders, not citizens. This is critical because many more people think that political violence can be justifiable than actually act on it. Thus when leaders make it clear that violence perpetrated by either leaders or citizens will not be pardoned or supported, it diminishes the likelihood that aggressive individuals will act.15
Party leaders should take a stand against violence before extremist politicians become significant figures, and should block their parties’ acceptance of would-be standard-bearers who dehumanize opponents or treat them as treasonous. France and Germany have both maintained versions of a cordon sanitaire to keep the AfD and National Rally from power. This has probably reduced the overall violence in both countries (although in France, the right split during the 2024 election, with a portion of the center-right aligning with National Rally).16 In America’s two-party system, an equivalent measure was Republican Party leaders’ refusal to embrace the nativist politics of Pat Buchanan in the 1990s, eventually causing him to leave the GOP and run as a third-party candidate.17
When leaders denounce violence or repent for past violent language or actions, supporters follow suit. Studies show that more inclusive language from the top reduces justifications for violence among followers.18 Conversely, when politicians use violent language, paint the opposition as the enemy, and fail to clearly denounce violence against their political opponents, it aggrandizes and mainstreams violent individuals who would normally be on the margins of society.19
In the United States, toxic language from leaders invoking anger, contempt, and especially disgust — the emotions most likely to lead others to violence — is increasingly prevalent. Yet there are important countervailing efforts underway. The Disagree Better advertisement campaign, led by Utah’s Republican governor, Spencer Cox, and featuring governors from both sides of the aisle agreeing to disagree civilly, is an example of politicians from both parties trying to set new norms. Many leaders on the left are also working to maintain norms of nonviolence, for instance, by drawing clear distinctions between the legitimate struggle of the Palestinian people and the unacceptability of antisemitism and violent tactics by the Democratic Socialists of America and other U.S. groups as well as Hamas and terrorist organizations abroad.20
Governments and leaders must support the rule of law. The Quality of Government Institute in Sweden has spent years looking across Europe at what builds trust. The organization found that people’s trust in government grew most when they believed that their courts and police were fair. Meanwhile, people trusted each other more when they believed that the courts and police enforced laws equally across social groups and that those who broke laws would be punished. Showing that the state will punish perpetrators of violence regularly, swiftly, and equally regardless of their ideology — and that it will do so through the courts, not police violence — is thus essential for building trust and curbing political violence.
A study examining Israel, Germany, and the United States found that when domestic terrorists believe that the government is ideologically on their side, they are more likely to use violence.21 Other studies show the same for perpetrators who believe that security services are on their side. In the United States, the sweeping arrests, investigations, and prosecutions of January 6 rioters tempered violent chatter on extremist websites as people who may previously have cheered violent language, ideas, or plans professed their fear of FBI surveillance and punishment.22
At the same time, police forces must not use disproportionate force, and they must police all people and communities equally and fairly. A study of the political violence in Germany and Italy during the turbulent 1960s and 1970s, when both countries were contending with domestic terror groups and experienced political murders, found that violence was more intense and lasted longer in Italy because at every juncture, Italian police used greater force.23 Similarly, the militia movement in the United States grew in the 1990s when the government employed guns-blazing tactics in Ruby Ridge, Idaho, and Waco, Texas, but died down when the federal government learned to charge and arrest members of illegal militias while keeping its own officers from overusing violence. State brutality tends to be the turning point at which people with grievances begin to adopt violent tactics.24
Courts are also critical for upholding the guardrails of democracy. When courts politicize themselves — or when politicians denigrate courts or pledge to pardon their allies — it corrodes public trust in the impartial rule of law. The persistence of election denialism is a particularly pernicious threat, as it undermines faith in the courts as the ultimate arbiter of election-related disputes.
Several ongoing initiatives in the United States, including the Committee for Safe and Secure Elections’ convening of election and law-enforcement officials and the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) Agora Institute–R Street Institute’s network of Republican leaders, are working to build trust in elections among right-leaning leaders and voters. Building trust in police and courts is more difficult, however, given that the institutions themselves must act to uphold the rule of law equally before trust accrues.25
Countries must alter political incentives. Winner-take-all systems — in which a single party’s candidate wins power over the entire district, sometimes even while falling short of a majority — are particularly associated with political violence because moving just a few voters can lead to a party’s total inclusion or exclusion from power.26 Two-party systems — which tend to result from winner-take-all rules — are also correlated with greater political violence, possibly because of their polarizing tendency.27 These systemic disadvantages are compounded by the large and growing share of single-member districts in the United States that are “safe” (that is, essentially noncompetitive) for one party or the other — a situation that allows the more-partisan voters who vote in low-turnout primary elections to effectively choose the winner, which leads to more-extreme politicians campaigning in more-extreme ways. Add to all this a Congress so narrowly divided that the ballots of a small number of voters in a handful of states and districts can determine which party controls both houses of the legislature. In short, the United States has political structures that incentivize a zero-sum approach to political competition and a bias toward representation from the extremes, each of which increases the likelihood of violence.
While the United States, Germany, and France all have histories of political violence and have seen political violence rise again in recent years, each element of the American system supercharges these dynamics. Conversely, both France’s multiparty, two-round voting system and Germany’s mixed-member proportional-representation system dampen such dynamics by giving voice to all parties and beliefs across the political spectrum while still allowing for the coalition politics necessary to form a cordon sanitaire against an extremist party or simply to reduce the violent intensity of a duopoly. In Germany, closed party lists that determine more than half the seats in the Bundestag also allow political parties to reduce the potential for extremist individuals to gain seats, since party leaders play a gatekeeping role for those seats. The United States, unique in its binding party-primary elections, has no similar gatekeeping mechanism.28
These structural realities explain why the 1998 Good Friday Agreement established a proportional-representation system for Northern Ireland: The winner-take-all system that existed during the violent Troubles was viewed as having exacerbated the polarization between the republican and loyalist communities. Structures are not cure-alls, however. There are plenty of drawbacks to multiparty systems, and the United States is unlikely to move away from a two-party system any time soon. The country might, however, consider how these lessons could be translated to the U.S. context. For instance, reforms that reduce the outsized power of primary voters, changes that (re)empower political parties to serve as gatekeepers for democracy, ranked-choice voting with instant runoffs that require majorities to win and spur more civil campaigns, and moves toward more proportional forms of representation could reduce the extremism of politicians while enhancing voter representation.
Communities must organize for peace. When politicians inflame polarization and violence in the hopes of building their base and political systems fail to contain the fallout, communities can do more than simply bear the costs. In Kenya, politicians had been using tribal animosities to build their bases since the return of multiparty democracy in the 1990s. The effects of this strategy had been particularly devastating in Wajir County, a rural area in the northeast that borders Ethiopia and Somalia. The county was home to many immigrants who were largely forgotten by the central government, other than when it sent in the military to quell local feuds and cross-border violence, or when politicians ginned up tribal animosity.29
But local activists eventually said enough during the early 1990s, and women organized community groups of local notables to stop the spirals of violence sparked by political rhetoric. Businesses, women’s groups, faith leaders, and other local leaders would meet regularly, building trust among one another and solving problems. It was essential that all these leaders — no matter their tribe or how violent it was or was not — denounce violence from their own group. Only by doing so could they quell reprisals and delegitimize justifications for violence among those demanding revenge. When violence that could potentially be politicized did break out, each of these leaders spoke to their communities to prevent escalation.
Groups such as Over Zero, the Carter Center, and Common Ground USA are introducing similar tactics to the United States, all of which are grounded in these international peacebuilding practices. These organizations are partnering with or helping local groups in multiple U.S. states, such as Idaho Leaders United, to help communities learn to calm violence at the local level.
Activists and political leaders must police their flanks. When activists fighting to change the system insist on change through democratic pathways, and when those overtures yield actual change over time, political violence decreases. But when activists in democracies allow violent elements to dictate actions, those activists tend to lose public support, making violent state responses to civic movements more acceptable to the public and therefore more likely. All this escalates political violence.30 The U.S. civil rights movement, for example, showed how nonviolent protest helped a minority group beset by political violence to achieve democratic gains. Violent protests, however, turned the media and public toward a law-and-order mindset that set back the cause, as recent research has confirmed.31
Activists can work to reduce the chances for violence within their flanks by having clear leadership and cohesion. That type of organization has been out of style among many social-justice activists today, who favor leaderless movements, spontaneous action, and flat hierarchies across organizations. Some activists have also begun to excuse unarmed but aggressive tactics, such as property destruction, road obstruction, and vandalism, as useful to achieving their aims. Yet research clearly shows that armed and violent flanks, even if they can sometimes prove useful, universally make it harder for nonviolent groups to attain their long-term goals.32 Armed flanks also increase the chances of repression from the state, more intense violence, and even civil war.
Meanwhile, some tactics that work in autocracies may backfire in polarized democracies. Most notably, unarmed but aggressive tactics (such as property damage) may help to achieve some intermediate goals (drawing attention to injustice, making more moderate positions more tenable), but will ultimately do more damage to a cause than good.33 Research conducted in the United States and other polarized countries has found that such tactics deepen polarization, increase the vote share for reactionary politicians, and decrease support for positive legislation. And with regard to political violence, unarmed aggressive tactics generally lead to more “intense, enduring, and indiscriminate” state violence wherever they are used.34
Changing Course
America’s political-violence problem is rooted in several mutually reinforcing political problems — deepening polarization, winner-take-all politics, parties’ failure to root out extremist elements, and waning public faith in democratic institutions. The biggest takeaway from international experiences in defusing such violence is that leadership matters: The more that leaders at all levels — from presidents and party leaders, to police chiefs and judges, to activists and community leaders — commit to upholding democratic values, to rejecting violence and antidemocratic, lawless behavior, and to using the tools that democracy provides to reform institutions and inspire hope and attachment to the system, the faster the trend can be reversed.
But to say the influence of all these leaders is equal would be a mistake. Political leaders play outsized roles in shaping public opinion; their words and actions can condone or stoke aggression and violence among their supporters just as easily as they can quell them. When leaders cross the line into antidemocratic or violent behavior, they must be held accountable — in the court of law, in the court of public opinion, and in the history books. Ensuring that this happens demonstrates not only fairness and equality under the law, a key ingredient for building trust, but it also demonstrates what more-responsible leadership looks like. Ultimately, this may be the most important of all the lessons for changing course in the United States.
NOTES
1. “Local Election Officials Survey — May 2024,” Brennan Center for Justice, 1 May 2024, www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/local-election-officials-survey-may-2024.
2. James A. Piazza, “Political Polarization and Political Violence,” Security Studies 32 (June–July 2023): 476–504; Milan W. Svolik, “Polarization versus Democracy,” Journal of Democracy 30 (July 2019): 20–32.
3. Jack A. Goldstone et al., “A Global Model for Forecasting Political Instability,” American Journal of Political Science 54 (January 2010): 190–208.
4. Piazza, “Political Polarization and Political Violence.”
5. Rachel Kleinfeld, “Polarization, Democracy, and Political Violence in the United States: What the Research Says,” Working Paper (Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, September 2023), available at https://carnegieendowment.org/research/2023/09/polarization-democracy-and-political-violence-in-the-united-states-what-the-research-says?lang=en.
6. Rishabh Sharma, “Demo-Crazy: Why West Bengal Sees Blood and Fire Even in Panchayat Polls,” India Today, 28 July 2023, www.indiatoday.in/india/story/west-bengal-panchayat-polls-violence-history-mamata-banerjee-tmc-bjp-cpm-marxists-2406305-2023-07-14; ACLED, “Political Violence and the 2023 Nigerian Election,” 22 February 2023, https://acleddata.com/2023/02/22/political-violence-and-the-2023-nigerian-election/; Michael Wahman, “How Strategic Violence Distorts African Elections,” Journal of Democracy 35 (April 2024): 108–21.
7. Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, “Threats and Violent Attacks by Far-Right Actors on Local Politicians Escalating,” 31 January 2024, https://globalextremism.org/post/threats-violent-attacks-by-far-right-actors-on-local-politicians-escalating/; Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, “Far-Right Hate and Extremist Groups: Germany,” https://globalextremism.org/germany/.
8. Rachel Kleinfeld, “The GOP’s Militia Problem: Proud Boys, Oath Keepers and Lessons from Abroad,” Just Security, 6 July 2022, https://www.justsecurity.org/81898/the-gops-militia-problem-proud-boys-oath-keepers-and-lessons-from-abroad/; Fabiola Cineas, “Donald Trump is the Accelerant,” Vox, 9 January 2021, www.vox.com/21506029/trump-violence-tweets-racist-hate-speech; “Trump Confirms He Would Pardon January 6 Rioters If He Becomes President,” CNN.com, www.cnn.com/2024/07/31/politics/video/january-6-pardon-rioters-donald-trump-nabj-conference-digvid.
9. Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, “Far-Right Political Violence Rising as European Elections Approach,” 5 June 2024, https://globalextremism.org/post/far-right-political-violence-rising-european-elections-approach/; James Angelos, “Attacks on German Politicians Stir Memories of Nazi Past,” Politico Europe, 9 May 2024, www.politico.eu/article/germany-politics-violence-attacks-election/; Andrea Carboni et al., Annual Report on Violence Targeting Local Officials 2023 (Grafton, Wis.: Armed Conflict Location & Event Data [ACLED], 2024), https://acleddata.com/acleddatanew/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Violence-Targeting-Local-Officials-2023-Report-Final.pdf; Niamh Kennedy and Emma Leyo, “More than 50 Candidates and Campaigners Physically Assaulted Ahead of French Elections,” CNN.com, 5 July 2024, www.cnn.com/2024/07/05/europe/french-elections-political-violence-intl-latam/index.html; John Lichfield, “The Politics of the French Riots,” Politico Europe, 3 July 2023, www.politico.eu/article/france-riots-politics-boy-shot-dead-by-police; Louis Nadau, “Appeler ‘à la justice’ et non ‘au calme’ : pour LFI, ‘la fin justifie les moyens,’” Marianne, 30 June 2023, www.marianne.net/politique/melenchon/appeler-a-la-justice-et-non-au-calme-pour-lfi-la-fin-justifie-les-moyens.
10. Rachel Kleinfeld, “Five Strategies to Support U.S. Democracy,” Working Paper (Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, September 2022), available at https://carnegieendowment.org/research/2022/09/five-strategies-to-support-us-democracy?lang=en; Ned Parker and Peter Eisler, “Political Violence in Polarized U.S. at Its Worst Since 1970s,” Reuters, 9 August 2023, www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-politics-violence/; Steven Chermak et al., “What NIJ Research Tells Us About Domestic Terrorism,” National Institute of Justice Journal, 4 January 2024, https://nij.ojp.gov/topics/articles/what-nij-research-tells-us-about-domestic-terrorism.
11. Dara Lind, “Bernie Sanders Can’t Denounce His Supporters. They’re His Leverage Against the Democrats,” Vox, 18 May 2016, www.vox.com/2016/5/18/11700510/sanders-harassment-supporters-sexism.
12. ACLED, “United States,” https://acleddata.com/united-states-and-canada/usa/.
13. Glocalities, “Growing Despair and Polarization Between Young Women & Men Impacts Elections,” https://glocalities.com/reports/trend-report-polarization; Grayson Wormser, “Data for Democracy: This Month’s Five Key Insights — July 2024,” Data for Democracy, 26 July 2024, https://citizendata.com/report/july-2024-data-for-democracy-political-violence-project-2025/.
14. “Report: Most of Arrested Portland Protestors Didn’t Vote in Oregon,” Kiro7, 15 November 2016, www.kiro7.com/news/local/report-most-of-arrested-portland-protesters-didnt-vote-in-oregon/467507196/.
15. “When Partisans Endorse Violence,” Niskanen Center, 10 February 2021, https://www.niskanencenter.org/when-partisans-endorse-violence/; Kaleigh Rogers, “Why It’s So Hard to Measure Support for Political Violence,” ABC News, 16 July 2024, https://abcnews.go.com/538/hard-measure-support-political-violence/story?id=111991539.
16. Adel Miliani, “Nouvelle amende contre Cyril Hanouna : retrouvez toutes les sanctions de l’Arcom contre C8 et CNews,” Le Monde, 25 July 2024, www.lemonde.fr/les-decodeurs/article/2024/07/25/c8-perd-sa-frequence-sur-la-tnt-retrouvez-toutes-les-sanctions-de-l-arcom-contre-c8-et-cnews_6223105_4355771.html.
17. Thomas B. Edsall, “Buchanan Bolts GOP for Reform Party,” Washington Post, 26 October 1999, https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/campaigns/wh2000/stories/buchanan102699.htm.
18. Lilliana Mason and Nathan Kalmoe, “How to Prevent a Spiral of Political Violence in America,” Foreign Affairs, 8 August 2024, www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/how-prevent-spiral-political-violence-america.
19. Marc S. Jacob et al., “Entrepreneurs of Conflict: Media Attention Without Consequences,” OSF Preprints, 10 July 2024, https://osf.io/preprints/osf/754ah.
20. Alex Nguyen, “AOC Slams Pro-Palestine Rally Promoted by Democratic Socialists of America,” Daily Beast, 11 October 2023, www.thedailybeast.com/aoc-slams-democratic-socialists-of-america-for-supporting-pro-palestine-rally.
21. Arie Perliger, “Terror Isn’t Always a Weapon of the Weak — It Can Also Support the Powerful,” Conversation, 28 October 2018, https://theconversation.com/terror-isnt-always-a-weapon-of-the-weak-it-can-also-support-the-powerful-82626.
22. Jared Holt, “Three Narratives Dissuading Pro-Trump Communities from Organizing on Behalf of the Former President,” Institute for Strategic Dialogue, Digital Dispatchesblog, 29 March 2023, www.isdglobal.org/digital_dispatches/three-narratives-dissuading-pro-trump-communities-from-organizing-on-behalf-of-the-former-president/.
23. Donatella della Porta and Mario Diani, Social Movements: An Introduction, 3rd ed. (Hoboken, N.J.: Wiley-Blackwell, 2020).
24. Jeff Goodwin, No Other Way Out: States and Revolutionary Movements, 1945–1991 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001).
25. See https://safeelections.org/ and “Building Trust in Elections,” R Street, www.rstreet.org/home/our-issues/governance/election-trust/.
26. Hanne Fjelde and Kristine Höglund, “Electoral Institutions and Electoral Violence in Sub-Saharan Africa,” British Journal of Political Science 46 (April 2016): 297–320.
27. G. Bingham Powell Jr., “Party Systems and Political System Performance: Voting Participation, Government Stability and Mass Violence in Contemporary Democracies,” American Political Science Review 75 (December 1981): 861–79.
28. John Ishiyama and Ibrahim Shliek, “Rethinking the Relationship Between Inclusive Institutions and Political Violence,” Nationalism and Ethnic Politics 26 (July–September 2020): 240–59.
29. Ken Menkhaus, “Conflict Assessment: Northern Kenya and Somaliland,” Danish Demining Group, February 2015, available at http://ssrn.com/abstract=2589109.
30. Amanda Murdie and Carolin Purser, “How Protest Affects Opinions of Peaceful Demonstration and Expression Rights,” Journal of Human Rights 16, no. 3 (2017): 351–69.
31. Omar Wasow, “Agenda Seeding: How 1960s Black Protests Moved Elites, Public Opinion and Voting,” American Political Science Review 114 (August 2020): 638–59; Brent Simpson, Robb Willer, and Matthew Feinberg, “Does Violent Protest Backfire? Testing a Theory of Public Reactions to Activist Violence,” Socius 4 (2018), https://doi.org/10.1177/2378023118803189.
32. Erica Chenoweth, “The Role of Violence in Nonviolent Resistance,” Annual Review of Political Science 26 (June 2023): 55–77.
33. Mohammad Ali Kadivar and Neil Ketchley, “Sticks, Stones, and Molotov Cocktails: Unarmed Collective Violence and Democratization,” Socius 4 (2018), https://doi.org/10.1177/2378023118773614; and Chenoweth, “Role of Violence in Nonviolent Resistance.”
34. Sabine C. Carey, “The Use of Repression as a Response to Domestic Dissent,” Political Studies 58 (February 2010): 167–86; Christian Davenport and Benjamin J. Appel, The Death and Life of State Repression: Understanding Onset, Escalation, Termination, and Recurrence (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022).
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