ELECTIONS, VIOLENCE, AND PARTIES
Research project led by Ursula Daxecker (PI), funded by an ERC grant (€1,5 million), 2020-2025
Project team: Noyonika Das (PhD student), Maureen Fubara (PhD student), postdoctoral fellow
Project collaborators: Hanne Fjelde (Uppsala University), Annekatrin Deglow (Uppsala University)
Since 1990, deadly violence has occurred in more than 30% of elections held outside of advanced, industrialized democracies. In the 2007 Kenyan elections and the 2010 Côte D’Ivoire elections, violence killed thousands of people in just a few months, undoing years of institution-building and undermining democracy. Much of contemporary politics unfolds in countries holding competitive elections but lacking institutionalized democracy. In these countries, election violence can still happen routinely because politicians use violence to influence election outcomes in their favor.
A major political and scholarly problem is that we know a lot about the conditions that make elections more or less violent, but lack insight into the more fundamental issues of how violence plays out on the ground. Departing from the focus on intensity in existing work, I develop a novel party-centered theory to explain the nature, organization, and consequences of election violence. Political parties are crucial actors linking politicians and citizens, and I attribute a central role to parties’ organizational and social links. The diversity of parties’ social support influences whether violence provides electoral benefits, implying that parties supported by a single group benefit more from violence. Party organization at the local level in turn explains whether groups can engage in targeted violence or have to rely on poorly-controlled thugs-for-hire. This theory changes how we think about election violence, explaining (1) how and why election violence happens and (2) the consequences of election violence for citizens. In work in progress examining the consequences of election violence in India, the project collaborates with Hanne Fjelde (Uppsala University) and Annekatrin Deglow (Uppsala University).
The project breaks new empirical ground by testing these claims subnationally in India and Nigeria, two of the world’s largest emerging democracies. The project uses a multi-method approach to examine within-country variation in party institutions, social support, and election violence in India and Nigeria, combining fieldwork interviews, quantitative data, survey experiments, and surveys.
For more, read this brief interview.
Output in progress:
"Election Violence, Partisanship, and Perceptions of Election Quality: Experimental Evidence from West Bengal." With Hanne Fjelde.
"Voter Intimidation as a Tool of Mobilization or Demobilization? Evidence from a List Experiment in West Bengal." With Annekatrin Deglow and Hanne Fjelde.
"How Hostile Misinformation Shapes Beliefs and Attitudes: A Survey Experiment in India" With Hanne Fjelde.
Project team: Noyonika Das (PhD student), Maureen Fubara (PhD student), postdoctoral fellow
Project collaborators: Hanne Fjelde (Uppsala University), Annekatrin Deglow (Uppsala University)
Since 1990, deadly violence has occurred in more than 30% of elections held outside of advanced, industrialized democracies. In the 2007 Kenyan elections and the 2010 Côte D’Ivoire elections, violence killed thousands of people in just a few months, undoing years of institution-building and undermining democracy. Much of contemporary politics unfolds in countries holding competitive elections but lacking institutionalized democracy. In these countries, election violence can still happen routinely because politicians use violence to influence election outcomes in their favor.
A major political and scholarly problem is that we know a lot about the conditions that make elections more or less violent, but lack insight into the more fundamental issues of how violence plays out on the ground. Departing from the focus on intensity in existing work, I develop a novel party-centered theory to explain the nature, organization, and consequences of election violence. Political parties are crucial actors linking politicians and citizens, and I attribute a central role to parties’ organizational and social links. The diversity of parties’ social support influences whether violence provides electoral benefits, implying that parties supported by a single group benefit more from violence. Party organization at the local level in turn explains whether groups can engage in targeted violence or have to rely on poorly-controlled thugs-for-hire. This theory changes how we think about election violence, explaining (1) how and why election violence happens and (2) the consequences of election violence for citizens. In work in progress examining the consequences of election violence in India, the project collaborates with Hanne Fjelde (Uppsala University) and Annekatrin Deglow (Uppsala University).
The project breaks new empirical ground by testing these claims subnationally in India and Nigeria, two of the world’s largest emerging democracies. The project uses a multi-method approach to examine within-country variation in party institutions, social support, and election violence in India and Nigeria, combining fieldwork interviews, quantitative data, survey experiments, and surveys.
For more, read this brief interview.
Output in progress:
"Election Violence, Partisanship, and Perceptions of Election Quality: Experimental Evidence from West Bengal." With Hanne Fjelde.
"Voter Intimidation as a Tool of Mobilization or Demobilization? Evidence from a List Experiment in West Bengal." With Annekatrin Deglow and Hanne Fjelde.
"How Hostile Misinformation Shapes Beliefs and Attitudes: A Survey Experiment in India" With Hanne Fjelde.