Why do legislators in some countries resort to physical violence and not in others? Answering this question could hold the key to understanding how the still understudied phenomenon of parliamentary violence relates to processes of democratisation. Does the fighting signal a potential breakdown of the democratic process or are they simply the growing pains of previously-closed regimes becoming more competitive? The only existing comprehensive cross-country study of the phenomenon argues that in democratic legislatures credible commitment problems are at the root of the violence. It claims that in younger democracies and more disproportional parliaments lawmakers are more likely to fight. Our preliminary research leads to us to a different conclusion. We vastly expand the existing dataset, extend the time frame of the analysis, and further include authoritarian and hybrid regimes. In addition, we move beyond a purely structuralist perspective and code the context and concrete triggers of parliamentary violence into the dataset. Our tentative findings suggest that violence in parliament is highly path-dependent, and not so much linked to disproportional parliaments than to the level of importance of proposed laws, their salience for political cleavages, and overall levels of political polarisation. As accusations of corruption and improper behaviour are surprisingly often at the origin of episodes of violence, we also suspect there to be a link with overall levels of corruption in politics and society. In the end, whether or not violence in parliament signals an opening or a reversal in the democratization process is largely dependent on the political and socio-economic context.
