Political Violence in America, Case Study: Portland Chicago Project on Security and Threats
Robert A. Pape  |  8/15/2020

Studying non-lethal political violence is essential for scholars and policymakers to understand the effects of policy interventions, the consequences of non-lethal political violence, and the potential for unintended consequences leading to exponential growth in further violence. A vital starting point is to collect excellent data. The purpose of this data report on non-lethal violence in Portland is to develop a useful and validated classification scheme on non-lethal political violence. Portland is a significant case for this purpose because media and government reports of the events in Portland during the summer of 2020 already indicate that non-lethal violence occurred and varied over time. There are, however, no tools to assess the seriousness of the violence and systematically track changes in the violence over time. Our overarching goal in this report is to use this case to validate a new classification scheme that can clarify non-lethal violence in Portland and can serve as a model for applying the new data tools in other cases.