Sandra Håkansson appointed to RJ Pro Futura

The DPCR congratulates Sandra Håkansson on her appointment to the RJ Pro Futura Programme, through which Riksbankens Jubileumsfond (RJ) annually awards promising young scholars a five-year fellowship. Sandra will receive a grant of approximately six million kronor for her project “Drivers and Consequences of Political Violence in Democracies.”

RJ Pro Futura is a national cutting-edge research program in the humanities and social sciences, which has reached its 20th anniversary. The programme is carried out in collaboration with the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study. It is not possible for an individual researcher to apply to RJ Pro Futura. Instead, Swedish higher education institutions authorised to award doctoral degrees in the humanities and social sciences can nominate candidates for the program.

Drivers and Consequences of Political Violence in Democracies (PV-DEM)

Previous research on Western democracies shows that the majority of MPs, mayors and parliamentary candidates experience psychological violence each year. It is particularly alarming that already marginalized groups in politics are targeted even worse than others. Women and immigrants face significantly more vile attacks than their peers. The research agenda on violence against politicians remains urgent, and a lingering question is how an illegitimate tactic such as violence comes to be normalized in democratic political contexts. PV-DEM will study the drivers of this development: who accepts the use of violence in politics, and when and for what purposes.

Previous work has also shown that violence increases political inequality. Women and immigrants, compared to their counterparts who have experienced as much violence, are much more likely to leave politics and become silenced by violence. Violence affects their political participation worse than others, but something that hasn’t been answered is why this is the case. Thus, the project also aims to identify the resources that shield some politicians from the harms of violence, and who has access to them.

Ultimately, the goal of the project is to better understand how political violence comes to set the boundaries of political action, and how we can safeguard democracy and democratic equality from the influence of violence.