Controlling Territory, Controlling Voters

Abstract

Violence in election campaigns is common across the African continent and beyond. According to some estimations, most African elections contain some degree of violence and most of this violence happens before elections, during the campaign. Campaign violence distorts political competition by creating an uneven playing field tilted towards actors with repressive capacity. It also enhances political inequalities and deprives voters of a meaningful opportunity to participate in the electoral process. While campaign violence is a common problem, it affects citizens differently across localities. Some localities tend to experience little violence during election campaigns, while others have been deeply affected by violence during elections. When violence and intimidation become an integral part of election campaigns in a locality, it becomes a tool of subnational authoritarianism that may effectively dismantle local democracy. This book focuses on the political geography of election violence in Africa, building on one crucial observation: elections in many African countries are highly structured around regional cleavages, and the support for political parties is rarely nationalized. The book argues that in such environments, campaign violence becomes an important tool to control and regulate access to space. The book builds on a wealth of data and extensive fieldwork in Zambia and Malawi. Using a combination of electoral geography analysis, constituency-level election violence data collected from local election monitors, focus group interviews, archival material, and individual-level survey data, the book shows how campaign violence in both countries is used as a territorial tool, predominantly within party strongholds.