Desmond King releases timely lecture text on ‘American Political Violence’
DPIR’s Professor Desmond King, the Andrew W Mellon Professor of American Government at Oxford and Fellow of Nuffield College, has published the text of his Leonard Schapiro Public Lecture on ‘American Political Violence’ in the Cambridge University Press journal Government and Opposition.
The paper is a remarkably timely analysis of political violence in the United States political system. It was released earlier this week, on the day of the 47th US President Donald Trump’s Inauguration and his signing of pardons and clemencies for close to 1,500 rioters convicted for seditious and other behaviour in the insurrection of January 6 2021. The action was designed to prevent the certification of Democrat Joe Biden as 46th US President.
Professor King said:
“As Americans and the world watch convicted insurrectionists and leaders of the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys organised militias being released from jail it will be helpful analytically to understand how the system of presidential pardons works to maintain a tradition of legitimate political violence in the US which other democracies organize out of the state’s monopoly on legitimate force.”
The Government and Opposition Leonard Schapiro Memorial Lecture is given annually in honour of British academic Leonard Schapiro, one of the Government and Opposition journal's founding editors. Professor King delivered the 2023 lecture at the RSA in London in May 2023.
