When democracies face political violence, maintaining a delicate balance between protecting individual liberties and ensuring community safety becomes a critical challenge. Citizens are confronted with a profound dilemma: the acceptability of trading individual liberties for collective security. Governments may respond to heightened political violence by modifying principles like habeas corpus—legitimizing arrests and detentions without concrete accusations—to address these threats. What do citizens think of laws that curtail individual rights to combat political violence? And how is this dilemma influenced by their exposure to violence? These questions appear particularly relevant in the current, challenging and possibly insecure, democratic political context.
We argue that citizens’ preferences regarding such laws are shaped by their exposure to violent acts and the nature of the violence itself. Italy in the 1970s and 1980s experienced waves of intense political violence, prompting the government to enact laws enhancing police and judicial powers while restricting certain civil liberties. To test our hypothesis, we employ a difference-in-differences research design. We analyse the results of two abrogative referenda held in Italy—June 1979 and May 1981—concerning public order laws at the municipal level, examining whether exposure to local political violence between these referenda influenced voting behaviour in favour of repealing restrictive laws. This study sheds light on how experiences of political violence shape democratic citizens’ trade-offs between individual liberty and collective security.