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Examines the role of violence in society, with some focus on the US; 20 articles. Topics include attacks on governments, individuals, and organizations, growth of terrorist organizations, attitudes of media and institutions, capitalism, right-wing populism, state terrorism, nuclear terrorism, patriarchy, and other societal manifestations of cultural violence.

The deeply embedded perception that human beings are violent by nature is a worldview that becomes instrumental for justifying armed conflict. Prominent authors in multiple scholarly disciplines have challenged the myth of the violent human being. This article approaches the complexity of challenging political violence by identifying common ground among different disciplines and putting scholarly research in dialogue with recent developments in war and peace across the globe. This article describes the cultural, political and institutional dimensions that sustain violence, and suggests a specific approach for addressing these three strands.

Elections are often violent affairs, casting doubt on the canonical claim that democracy makes societies more peaceful by creating nonviolent means to contest for power. We develop a formal argument to demonstrate that this conclusion is incorrect. Holding elections has a direct effect of increasing levels of violence close to the voting, as this is when electoral violence can influence political outcomes. Precisely for this reason, elections also have an indirect effect of decreasing levels of violence at all other times, as parties can wait for the election when their efforts are more likely to succeed. The direct and indirect effects generate a "political violence cycle" that peaks at the election. However, when the indirect effect is larger, politics would be more violent without elections. When elections also provide an effective nonviolent means to contest for power, they unambiguously make society more peaceful while still generating a political violence cycle.

AbstractNations with an abundance of natural resources suffer disproportionately from internal violence, especially civil wars. State reliance on external sources of rent revenue, or rentierism, can lead to violence for several reasons. This article examines three of the primary explanations for the association. A common explanation is that rebel groups are motivated to fight in pursuit of natural resource wealth. An alternative explanation is that grievances, at times resulting in violence, can manifest if rent revenue is used by the state to repress or ignore the citizenry. A third explanation notes that rentier states are structurally weak and therefore vulnerable to violent challenges because elites frequently use rent revenue for personal or political reasons, not national interest. This article also considers where this line of study might be headed, given recent developments. I suggest that future research on rentierism and violence should examine an array of rent revenue streams, not just natural resources. In addition, scholars should take note that resource industries are increasingly privatizing, which has important implications for the classification of rents and, more generally, the study of rentierism.

The last few years have witnessed an increase in democratic "backsliding" in the United States—a decline in the quality of democracy, typically accompanied by an influx of non-normative behavior, such as political violence. Despite the real consequences of support for violence, fairly little is known about such an extremist attitude outside studies of terrorism or aggression. Using a unique survey containing many psychological, political, and social characteristics, we find that perceived victimhood, authoritarianism, populism, and white identity are the most powerful predictors of support for violence, though military service, conspiratorial thinking, anxiety, and feelings of powerlessness are also related. These patterns suggest that subjective feelings about being unjustly victimized—irrespective of the truth of the matter—and the psychological baggage that accompanies such feelings lie at the heart of support for violence. We use these results to build a profile of characteristics that explain support for violence; the predictive validity of this profile is then tested by examining its relationship with support for the January 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol riot, with which it is strongly associated, even accounting for support for Donald Trump. Our findings have implications for the detection of extremist attitudes and our understanding of the non-partisan/ideological foundations of anti-social political behavior.

In recent years the conflict in Natal has been described as a low-intensity civil war while on the Reef (the PWV region) it has been called an undeclared war and there have even been references to `ethnic cleansing'. But in both cases it is more complex than any of these definitions since there are a number of different elements to the violence. This study shows how it is not simply a struggle between the forces opposing the undemocratic system as represented by apartheid and those governmental structures upholding the status quo. It goes further than that; it is not only a reflection of the changing political situation in South Africa but also stems from demographic and other social conditions (rapid urbanization, proliferation of squatter settlements and competition for resources).