About the project
What do ordinary citizens think about political violence, and does it matter what they think? The systematic empirical studies of violence have largely ignored the moral perceptions that ordinary citizens have regarding the use of political violence in different situations. Examples of such perceptions could be "it is wrong to physically harm a political opponent" or "it is always right to use weapons to defend one's country." Researchers often make assumptions about these perceptions, for example, assuming that there is little tolerance for political violence in peaceful societies and the opposite in violent societies.
MoViCon studies when and under what conditions citizens support or condemn political violence, and with what moral justifications. The project also explore how these moral perceptions influence the actual occurrence of political violence in different communities. The project makes three innovations to answer these questions.
- First, we develop a conceptualization of "moral attitudes towards political violence" that can be measured through experiments in surveys.
- Secondly, we develop a theory on how moral attitudes towards political violence are formed and evolve.
- Thirdly, we conduct surveys in different countries to measure moral attitudes towards violence, examine how they vary within and across societies, and test the theory on how these attitudes are shaped.
- Finally, we investigate how variation (within and between countries) in attitudes towards political violence predicts the actual occurrence of political violence.
