DEMOCRACY WATCHWorried About Violence, Threats as Election Nears? Just Say No.
Political violence has been increasing in the U.S. from the recent attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump to the 10-fold surge in threats against members of Congress in the past decade. And experts see serious risk of more incidents as the election nears. Key is for leaders, voters to stand in solidarity against it, political scientists say.
Political violence has been increasing in the U.S. from the recent attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump to the 10-fold surge in threats against members of Congress in the past decade. And experts see serious risk of more incidents as the election nears.
Late last week, the Ash Center for Governance and Innovation convened a panel discussion on “Political Violence and the 2024 Presidential Election” to clarify what is happening in our country and suggest some possible solutions.
Moderator Erica Chenoweth, academic dean for faculty engagement and the Frank Stanton Professor of the First Amendment at the Harvard Kennedy School, opened the hourlong online event by asking the panelists to respond to the attack on Trump that left one audience member dead and two others wounded besides the former president.
“I was angry that gun violence had once again marred American life,” said Hardy Merriman, president of the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict. “The premise of democracy is that we have this broad and beautiful and diverse country and we resolve our differences through institutions, through elections, through our judicial system, and through other systems,” continued the author of “Harnessing Our Power to End Political Violence (HOPE).”
Lilliana Mason, associate professor of political science at Johns Hopkins University, concurred. “I was holding my breath because what happens next is extremely consequential.”
Mason, co-author of “Radical American Partisanship: Mapping Violent Hostility, Its Causes, and the Consequences for Democracy” went on to explain: “Whether or not it is interpreted as a partisan event or ideological can really, really change how everyone experiences that act. I was very relieved to see that both Republican and Democratic leaders spoke out against violence, and it didn’t seem to be a partisan event. That allowed us to take a breath.”
Sarah Birch, professor of political science at King’s College, London, studies violence in emerging democracies, primarily in Africa. After the shooting, however, she “went to my electoral violence data set, and I discovered that electoral violence has increased quite a lot in the last 15 years in established democracies. This is something political scientists have not paid attention to — and this calls out for urgent attention.”
Her research suggests that “when it does happen it is not orchestrated by political elites,” said Birch, the author of “Electoral Violence, Corruption, and Political Order.” “But the most interesting unanswered question is how the tenor of election campaigns … might contribute to electoral violence.”
Chenoweth noted an “overwhelming majority of Americans … categorically reject using
