Targeting Politicians, Triggering Participation? The (Gendered) Effect Of Violence Against Politicians On Citizens’ Political Ambition And Participation.

In today's political climate, harassment, intimidation and violence against candidates and elected representatives have unfortunately become commonplace, with women disproportionately experiencing various forms of violence. This not only influences the decision-making of politicians but also impacts the legislative recruitment chain in politics. For example, because of violence politicians increasingly consider leaving their job. Moreover, women candidates change their campaign behavior, resulting in less visibility and therefore, fewer chances to be elected. While research has increasingly focused on the effects of political violence on candidates’ and elected representatives’ willingness to remain in politics, less is known about how it influences citizens and their willingness to participate in politics. This paper aims to fill this gap by investigating how citizens’ electoral turnout, party membership and affiliation, and readiness to stand for election are influenced by learning about harassment, intimidation, and violence in politics. By delving into how political violence affects various forms of political participation, this research contributes to understanding the broader impact of political violence on democratic engagement. First of all, we study whether it matters where violence takes place, hypothesizing that harassment, intimidation and violence against elected representatives in their private sphere, e.g. in their home, deters citizens from participating more than harassment, intimidation and violence in the public sphere, and that this is gendered, with a larger effect for women. Secondly, we expect a gendered effect in that when a citizen learns about violence against a politician of the same gender, this will intensify the chilling effect of learning about political violence on political engagement. Thirdly, we show the dynamics of how exposure to information about harassment, intimidation and violence in policies impacts political participation and ambition by investigating both the direct effect, with a perceived dangerous environment leading to reduced political activity, but also the indirect effect via a decrease in the internal political efficacy. We study the effect of harassment, intimidation, and violence in the private and public lives of the elected representatives on citizens’ political engagement with an experimental vignette survey in three countries, each with unique electoral features, gender equality norms, and prevalence of harassment, intimidation and violence: Belgium (Flanders), Denmark, and the Netherlands.