How Repression Spreads Dissent: The Diffusion of Election Violence in India

• In Event: Elections and Violence

Abstract

How does political violence spread across a country during the electoral processes? Though a growing number of researchers have started to explore the causes of violence occurring in the electoral process, we know very little about how such electoral violence spreads from one location to another. In this article, we claim that an occurrence of electoral violence inflicted by the government in a neighboring location will spur dissents from citizens and opposition supporters at home. Repression in neighboring locations creates new grievances at home, and opposition groups preemptively move against the government before their communities are targeted by state repression. On the other hand, we anticipate that government-sponsored election violence diminishes dissent in the area where repression occurred as it intimidates citizens and reduces opposition groups' capabilities to mobilize. We test our arguments using subnational data on electoral violence in India. To identify \emph{causal} diffusion effects, we use stationary causal directed acyclic graphs. We find strong evidence for our hypotheses. By understanding the ways in which electoral violence spreads, our findings improve prediction of incidents of violence. We also contribute to the literature on repression by showing divergent effects of neighboring-repression and local-repression on dissents.

Authors

• Max Blau Gallop, University of Strathclyde

• Jun Koga Sudduth, University of Strathclyde