Political Campaigners Under Attack: How Do Citizens Respond to Political Violence?

This paper examines the underexplored impact of violence against politicians on citizens’ acceptance of violence and their willingness to engage in politics. By focusing on citizens, it addresses a critical gap in research, which has largely emphasized how violence affects politicians rather than the public. While existing studies demonstrate that political violence influences politicians’ behavior and discourse, impacting representative elements of democracy, there is limited insight into how such incidents shape citizens’ engagement after learning about violence. Although citizens generally condemn violence against politicians in the abstract, it remains unclear whether their own political engagement is impacted and varies based on the target of the incident. We theorize that the impact of violence against political figures on political engagement varies by (1) partisanship; (2) political role (elite or activist) and (3) the gender of the victim. Additionally, we examine the potential mediating roles of fear and anger on political participation. Based on a survey experiment in both Belgium and the Netherlands (n = 3.139) we find no demobilizing effect of learning about political violence. In fact, we find a small mobilizing effect when the target belongs to the political in-group of the party. This mobilizing effect is likely to be mediated by anger.