Democracy in the Crosshairs

Political violence is surging in the United States. Here's how to understand it.

I went back to the United States this week for the first time in a while—and felt tremendously sad about it. Even though I have lived in Britain for the majority of my adult life and now have a UK passport to complement my US one, my identity remains largely American.

And it hurts to watch one’s own country destroying itself.

Nowhere is this more evident than with surging levels of high-profile political violence—and the predictably counterproductive responses to it, which only make future political violence even more likely.

But for the United States to effectively reduce political violence, an accurate diagnosis is essential. It’s impossible to solve a problem that isn’t properly understood.

After studying political violence around the globe for the past fifteen years, I’ve learned that the drivers of political violence aren’t always obvious; that popular debates around political violence routinely misunderstand why it happens; and that only a small number of levers exist to reduce the number of attacks.