Economic Hardship Increases Justification of Political Violence

Acts of political violence have reached a new level of intensity with the storming of the United States Capitol in 2021. In this paper, I investigate whether and how economic hardship affects political violence justification. Using an original two-wave panel survey around the 2020 US Presidential election, two studies from the American National Election Survey (ANES), and an original study from Germany, the results show substantial support for political violence justification among respondents. In both countries, political violence justification is strongly and consistently associated with economic hardship. The study thus shows that political violence justification is widespread, not just in polarised two-party systems, but also in other, less polarised multiparty systems.