Partisanship and Support for Restricting the Civil Liberties of Suspected Terrorists

What impacts people’s willingness to restrict the civil liberties of suspected terrorists? For decades, social scientists have studied the dynamics that shape political tolerance, and increasingly, scholars examine the effects of terrorism for people’s willingness to limit civil liberties in pursuit of security. We argue that the social categorization of a suspected terrorist (e.g., White Nationalist or Islamic Fundamentalist) is consequential for civil liberty attitudes in the United States, but, importantly, we theorize that the effects are contingent on partisanship. We implement question-wording experiments in four surveys. Three of the studies are comprised of national samples implemented at different points in time; a fourth sample incorporates a targeted sample of U.S. military servicemembers. We find evidence that partisanship moderates the effects of terrorist categorization such that Republicans are less likely to restrict the civil liberties of White Nationalists than unspecified suspected terrorists. By contrast, Democrats are more inclined to restrict the civil liberties of White Nationalists. At times, partisanship also moderates the effects of an Islamic Fundamentalist categorization. The study has implications for political tolerance, partisanship, and attitudes toward terrorism in contemporary politics.