Political Causes and Personal Consequences of Violence: Research from South Asia

Session Submission Type: Virtual Full Paper Panel

Session Description

How do electoral politics shape violence in South Asia? And once violence begins, how do ordinary people respond? Violence has been an endemic feature of politics in post-independence India and Pakistan, ranging from urban riots and election violence to irredentist insurgencies and nearly a half-dozen inter-state wars. Understanding the causes and consequences of political violence in India and Pakistan is important in its own right---20% of the world's population lives in one of the two countries---but evidence from the region is also increasingly important for generating new, generalizable insights on research and policy puzzles of broader concern. The papers on this panel all analyze evidence from South Asia to develop and test generalizable theories that address long-standing questions in the study of violent politics: How does the interaction between different levels of government shape violence in separatist conflicts? Why do some political parties use violence when they are trying to win votes? How do people decide between different survival strategies when they encounter political violence?

Drew Stommes' paper shows how partisan alignment between state and central governments in India affects the dynamics of violence in ongoing insurgencies. Using a regression discontinuity design, plus qualitative evidence from insurgencies across India, he finds that partisan alignment between the central government and the local government in insurgency-affected states improves public goods provision and civilian socioeconomic well-being, which makes insurgency less attractive. The paper broadens the scope of the counterinsurgency literature, showing that national-level politics can influence the success of local efforts to win hearts and minds.

Niloufer Siddiqui's paper makes a novel contribution to the literature on electoral violence, focusing on the benefits that political parties derive from violence, in addition to the potential electoral costs. Focusing on two parties in Karachi, Pakistan, she shows that the political salience of ethnicity insulates parties from the electoral costs of using violence, so long as they make ethnic appeals to voters. Using a survey experiment, interviews, and ethnographic observations of two political parties (the MQM and PPP), Siddiqui explains variation in how parties use violence once they have decided to do so: Certain types of organizations allow parties to carry out violence with "in house" cadres, while others outsource violence to specialists.

Aidan Milliff's paper examines the other side of the violence equation, asking: what explains variation in the way civilians respond to episodes of violence? Using interviews and computational analysis of oral histories from pogroms and insurgent violence in Delhi and Punjab, he shows that individual-level variation in perceptions of control and predictability mediate the influences of identity, resources, social hierarchy in determining how people respond to violence. Milliff argues that control and predictability appraisals help explain within-community variation in decisions to migrate, decisions to participate in violence, and adaptation to violent threats.
The papers in this panel contribute new empirical knowledge on critical issues in the domestic security politics of India and Pakistan, the global importance of which are likely to grow through the 21st Century. Concurrently, this panel highlights new theoretical insights that advance long-standing research agendas in comparative politics and security studies on the strategic logic of violence, the politics of countering insurgent movements, and the individual roots of participation in violence and conflict-induced migration.

Sub Unit

• Division 21: Conflict Processes

Individual Presentations

• Center-Periphery Partisan Alignment and Rebel Violence: Evidence from India - Drew Stommes, Yale University

• Political Parties and Violence Specialists: Explaining Violence in Karachi - Niloufer Siddiqui, SUNY, University at Albany

• Seeking Safety: Civilian Decision-Making in the 1984 Pogroms and Punjab Crisis - Aidan Milliff, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Chair

• Saumitra Jha Stanford University

Discussant

• Mashail Aman Malik Harvard University