Political Violence in Crisis-Ridden Greece: Evidence from the Far Right and the Far Left

Abstract:This article approaches empirically political violence by presenting a new database (PVGR) on political violence in Greece from 2008 to 2019. We contribute to the literature, firstly, by examining both right-wing and left-wing extremism and, secondly, by registering the whole spectrum of low-intensity violent escalation from verbal and physical attacks to terrorism. We gather data on internal-supply aspects of political violence and provide measures of frequency, intensity, escalation, and geographical distribution. We typologize evidence in analytical categories, thus contributing to the classification of the phenomenon beyond ideological doctrines. We test core theories on the causes of violence, and find empirical evidence that far left violence is largely unresponsive to macro-level indicators of socioeconomic grievances and political opportunities, whereas far right violence is primarily associated with rising inequalities, sudden changes in immigration, parliamentary representation of extremism and participation of radical parties in government.