Curbing Citizen Support for Violence Against Politicians

Rising political violence against elected officials and affective polarization pose a pressing threat to democratic stability, challenging classic theories that emphasize political order through the state’s monopoly on legitimate force. Reducing citizen support for violence against politicians is therefore crucial to safeguard democratic institutions. We examine this question using two pre-registered survey experiments in France and Belgium that manipulate politician characteristics (gender, age, and party) and violence’s severity. We find that extreme violent attitudes remain rare, although support for verbal abuse online is substantial. Contrary to dominant accounts, such attitudes are largely unrelated to partisan hostility. Then, we show that interventions that humanize politicians through perspective-taking or prime democratic pluralism reduce support for political violence. These findings suggest that political violence reflects broader failures in the internalization of democratic norms, and that reinforcing empathy and norms of political tolerance may constitute a viable strategy to protect democratic institutions.