Voting for Peace? Choosing Security over Identity in Elections After Conflict

• In Event: Poster Session: Conflict Processes II

Abstract

How do people vote after conflict? How does conflict reshape the party system? Although existing research has explored the effect of conflict on political participation, little is known about how experience of conflict might affect vote choice. Based on the cross-national observation that conflicts that ended in government victory tended to be followed by a sweeping electoral victory by the government party, this paper conjectures that in the aftermath of conflict, voters have a stronger incentive to vote for the political actor that would bring security and peace. Even if there is a candidate or party affiliated with their identity group, they can vote instead for a national party with a bigger capacity to bring unity and good governance. Such prominence of security-seeking voting over identity voting may explain the counterintuitive phenomenon of the government party winning nationally against sectarian or regional parties after a divisive conflict.

The paper aims to show this in two ways. First, a cross-national analysis will show the relationship between conflict outcomes and the resulting party system in the first few elections after conflict. The researcher has found preliminary evidence that while conflicts that ended in government victory were followed by sweeping electoral wins by government parties, as in the cases of Angola, Sri Lanka, and Sierra Leone, conflicts that ended in negotiated settlements or peace agreements were followed by more evenly balanced electoral competitions, like in Guatemala, El Salvador, and Mozambique. A large-N analysis of post-conflict elections will explore such patterns in detail.

For a more fine-tuned analysis, this paper will discuss an in-depth case study of the conflict in Myanmar and the recent elections. Although the conflict in Myanmar is still ongoing, the rich subnational variation in the country allows an interesting analysis of how people voted in the context of conflict and recent democratization. With township-level data on electoral choices, the level of violence, and the presence of ethnic armed organizations, the paper will examine if communities with active conflict history are more prone to vote for the government party, the opposition party, or an ethnic party. The researcher is planning an individual-level survey research for fieldwork as well.

This research project has promising contributions for understanding political consequences of conflict. The non-intuitive voting pattern after conflict implies that political cleavages and party systems will be reshaped by conflict. This has significant implications on how power is distributed, and thus on the prospects for post-conflict stability. Thus, it is crucial to move on from conventional literature on whether holding elections per se leads to peace, towards an emphasis on the outcomes of those post-conflict elections.

Author

• Jiwon Lee Kim, Stanford University