Violent Actors and Threats to Local Democracy

Session Submission Type: Full Paper Panel

Session Description

The panel brings together diverse perspectives on the local implications of violence across the developing world. Violent actors can influence political parties, community associations, and even the outcome of elections, complicating democratic consolidation. This is especially true at the local level, where violent actors may have more leverage over local power brokers and be able to forge politically decisive partnerships. This panel interrogates how a range of violent actors shape local political outcomes by analyzing studies of four major emerging democracies: Brazil, India, Mexico, and the Philippines.

Each of the four papers in this panel addresses a distinct aspect of the intersection between violence and local politics. The first two papers explore the complicated relationship between armed group presence and democratic consolidation. Chriswell provides a theoretical framework explaining how civil society organizes to deal with armed group presence and subsequent insecurity, explaining why citizens organize either through or around the state. She contends that the strength of pre-existing civil society, degree of criminal competition, and level of state autonomy explain where and how groups of citizens contest criminal group presence, and tests this in the Mexican case. Haim then explains why local political clans have incentives to make alliances with insurgents in the Philippines, despite national counterinsurgency policies. His analysis demonstrates the key role that local political elites play in determining counterinsurgency success and in managing violence. The next two papers focus on how armed group presence can shape actors and their decisions during election cycles. Stommes explores when armed political parties use violence against their rivals during the election cycle. He demonstrates how incumbent electoral losses shape the subsequent targets and timing of violence in West Bengal, India. Trudeau argues that candidates most likely to strike electoral deals with criminal groups are those that leverage their dissimilarities, both from the criminal group and the constituents. Drawing from local races in Brazil, she shows how candidates minimize legal and physical risk in order to benefit from criminal involvement in elections. This panel leverages the diversity of distinct armed actors and regional contexts to better understand the myriad ways in which violence and democracy intersect.

Two Discussants will offer their comments: Professor Sarah Z. Daly and Professor Niloufer Siddiqui have made important contributions to our understanding of political violence in democracies. Their regional knowledge of Latin America and South Asia, respectively, lends itself to a robust intraregional dialogue. Professor Lauren E. Young, whose research on coercion, violent actors, and elections spans multiple continents, will serve as Chair. Together, the papers on this panel provide insight into conditions of violence and insecurity under democracy and how state, armed nonstate, and civilian actors interact as a result. Furthermore, the panel brings into conversation four countries that are seldomly discussed together, enabling a rich discussion of the similarities and differences of political violence across democratic contexts.

Sub Unit

• Division 11: Comparative Politics

Individual Presentations

• Whose Returns to Office? Discrimination and Deals with Criminal Groups in Brazil - Jessie Trudeau, Harvard University

• How Criminal Organization Presence Makes and Breaks Citizens - Kaitlyn Chriswell, Harvard University

• Clash of Clans: How Local Politicians Shape Insurgent Conflict - Dotan Haim, Florida State University

• Armed Political Parties and Their Violence: Evidence from West Bengal, India - Drew Stommes, Yale University

Chair

• Lauren E Young University of California, Davis

Discussants

• Sarah Zukerman Daly Columbia University

• Niloufer Siddiqui SUNY, University at Albany