Voting for Violence: Violence as an Electoral Strategy in Democracies

• In Event: Attitudes towards, and Support for, Democracy: Global Perspectives

Abstract

Political violence persists in many democracies, and politicians at times condone, incite, or even sponsor violence. We explain when and why political parties in democracies use violence as an electoral strategy. Integrating interpretive and instrumentalist accounts, we argue that politicians use violence for one of two aims vis-à-vis the audience; to coerce those targeted with violence, or to mobilize those sympathetic to the perpetrators. While violence may have both effects at once, we argue that politicians tend to prioritize one over the other, with each type having distinct implications for the actors, targets, geography, and cleavages of violence. Incumbents use violence primarily coercively, targeting the opposition in areas where it is expanding its control. In contrast, opposition parties use violence to mobilize electoral support, targeting competitive and demographically diverse districts in which cleavages can be sharpened through violence. We find support for the empirical implications of our argument in India. Our analysis relies on novel micro-level data on election results and political violence for more than 90,000 polling booths. We complement these data with qualitative content analysis of local news and campaign speeches. Grounded in strong micro-foundations, our study establishes majoritarian violence as a primary threat to democracy.

Authors

• Ursula E. Daxecker, University of Amsterdam

• Neeraj Vimal Prasad, University of Amsterdam