Jeffrey S. Kopstein is Chancellor’s Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Irvine. He is the author, most recently, of The Assault on the State: How the Global Attack on Modern Government Endangers Our Future (with Stephen E. Hanson, 2024) and editor of Politics, Violence, Memory: The New Social Science of the Holocaust (with Jelena Subotic and Susan Welch, 2023).
Democracies have always sparked conflict, disagreement, and deep ideological divisions. Polarized politics are hardly rare in democratic life. So under what conditions does polarization turn violent, and how can this danger be contained?
