Do Authoritarians Support Political Violence?

ABSTRACT Research has linked the authoritarian personality with support for political violence, including violence against the government. However, support for political violence is simultaneously a measure of and an outcome of the authoritarian personality, and one key component (submission to authority) is the antithesis of one key measure of political violence (violence against authority). This article makes three contributions. First, we accentuate the importance of using exogenous measures of the authoritarian personality when estimating its effect on support for political violence. Second, leveraging data from an original survey and the American National Election Studies, we find that the relationship between authoritarianism and support for violence is conditional: it can be positive, negative, or null, depending on who is in control of government and the specificity of political-violence measures. Third, we argue that another concept—the securitarian personality—might better predict support for violence. Access to firearms—which we argue is downstream from securitarianism—consistently predicts support for political violence.