Political Parties, Violent Youth and Electoral Insecurity

• In Event: Elections and Conflict

Abstract

As at now, more than half of the countries in sub-Sahara Africa have made some commendable democratic strides since the “third wave” democratization process in the early 90s. Yet, despite this positive development in the path of democratization, multi-party contests in the region have been characterized by different manifestations of violence and other violations of democratic norms. One of the major reasons accounting for this is the activities of violent youth in political activities and elections across African countries. However, cross – sectional studies that focus on the mobilization of youth by political parties and party leaders are still missing from the literature. This study addresses two main important puzzles relating to violent youth mobilization by party leaders and electoral insecurity. The first is, what explains variation across space in the nature and intensity of violent youth activities and electoral insecurity in Africa? The second is, how are the networks of violent youth and political leaders/godfathers created and sustained? To address these puzzles, this study adopts a nested inference comparative research strategy by analyzing first, a cross-sectional comparison of large – N Cases of 47 African countries which is subsequently nested with an in-depth qualitative comparative study of Nigeria and Zambia. The time frame of the study is 1990-2017.

Author

• Ghadafi Saibu, University of Bayreuth