At times, lawmakers resort to physical violence instead of arguments to resolve their
differences. Recent research has made progress in determining the causes of this
phenomenon. But the literature has also hinted at the possibility that parliamentary
violence may act as a bellwether for important political phenomena such as democratic
backsliding, civil conflict, or voter satisfaction. In this paper, we systematically test the
predictive qualities of physical violence in parliaments using an original, global dataset of
cases of legislative violence and a matched difference-in-differences design. We observe
that levels of democracy do change in years after violence occurred but that the direction
(democratisation vs. backsliding) depends on initial levels of democracy. Second, we find no
significant downstream linkages with neither voter dissatisfaction nor civil conflict. The
findings have implications for the literature on democratic backsliding, conflict, and
democratic institutions.