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Abstract
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We write to correct misrepresentations of our book (1) in Westwood et al.'s (2) article on the American public's violent political views. The article strains to frame itself as a refutation, but, in fact, it counters a straw man.
The article's (2) empirics are presented as a novel, necessary critique, but they largely replicate and extend the findings in our book (1), which we sent the authors several months before their publication. The article repeatedly cites our book but does not represent it. Instead, the article focuses on brief, necessarily simplified media reports published while our book was in production.
The timing of academic publishing means the article (2) rushed into print before our book (1), so its selective descriptions of our work left reviewers unable to fully weigh the article's claims and contributions.
Like the article (2), our book (1) begins by showing that a small minority of the public holds violent political views on most questions, but levels of support depend greatly on details. In fact, most of the book focuses on how question wording and political context change observed support for political violence. That contingency undermines the article's search for an exact level of support for violence.
The article (2) calls for specific questions to clarify "violence." We agree. Our book (1) includes two dozen questions, general and specific, with a variety of response scales. We know what people meant by "violence" because we asked them in follow-up questions. In short, the article calls for measures that we already employed in the book...
1. N. P. Kalmoe, L. Mason, Radical American Partisanship: Mapping Violent Hostility, Its Causes, & the Consequences for Democracy (University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL, 2022).
2. S. J. Westwood, J. Grimmer, M. Tyler, C. Nall, Current research overstates American support for political violence. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 119, e2116870119 (2022).
Language: en |