Political violence in a polarized democracy: Years of Lead (YoL) data on Italy 1969–1988

Abstract

What are the violent repertoires of politics in democracies? We contend that political violence in democratic settings can take many forms. We offer new guidelines and conceptual insights to enhance our understanding of political violence in democracies and promote a more comprehensive study of it. We provide new empirical evidence on patterns of political violence in a polarized democracy, relative trends, repertoires of violence, and the state’s responses. Our novel dataset on political violence covers the period of Italian history between 1969 and 1988, also known as the Years of Lead (Anni di Piombo). The dataset is based on a triangulation of news sources and an ‘actor-action-target’ analytical framework. We collected over 7,800 geolocated and temporally coded events, shedding light on an understudied but extremely violent period in Italian history. We contend that scholars should avoid conceptualizing political violence in democratic societies as a residual phenomenon, often narrowly framed as mere terrorism due to normative biases and analytical constraints. Instead, a broader perspective is necessary to fully understand its complexity and implications.