Canary in the Coal Mine? The Predictive Qualities of Violence in Parliaments

• In Event: Legislatures & Parliamentary Politics Under Autocracy

Abstract

At times, lawmakers resort to physical violence instead of arguments to resolve their differences. Recent research has made progress in determining the causes of this phenomenon. But the literature has also hinted at the possibility that parliamentary violence may act as a bellwether for important political phenomena such as democratic backsliding, civil conflict, or voter satisfaction. In this paper, we systematically test the predictive qualities of physical violence in parliaments using an original, global dataset of cases of legislative violence and a matched difference-in-differences design. We observe that levels of democracy do change in years after violence occurred but that the direction (democratization vs. backsliding) depends on initial levels of democracy. Second, we find no significant downstream linkages with neither voter dissatisfaction nor civil conflict. The findings have implications for the literature on democratic backsliding, conflict, and democratic institutions.

Authors

• Moritz Schmoll, Mohammed VI Polytechnic University

• Wang Leung Ting, London School of Economics