Electoral Violence Early Warning and Infrastructures for Peace

Abstract

Outbreaks of election-related violence can be devastating, but experience has shown that they can be prevented. The need for improved efficiency of electoral violence early warning and prevention is increasingly argued. Good practices – developed nationally, regionally and globally – offer useful understanding of the phenomenon and of what can be done to improve prevention and mitigation. Although diverse and contingent on mandates and contexts in which organisations operate, early warning and prevention methodologies have common denominators that can be comparatively analysed. The establishment of national infrastructures for peace, which are also mandated to coordinate early warning, prevention and mitigation of electoral violence, helps to ensure that the impact of such efforts is maximised.

Does Corporate Social Responsibility Initiative Dissuade the Increasing Electoral Violence in sub-Saharan Africa? Evidence from Nigeria’s Oil Producing Region

“…Despite the fact that electoral violence can be a broad concept, studies of it have normally depended on a number of general measures (Birch & Muchlinski, 2017). Electoral violence has been perceived as violent protests against election results, political parties, or opposition groups; in addition to attacks by gangs and mobs against evident manifestations of elections, like polling places (UNDP, 2009;Alihodzic, 2012). Electoral violence can take place before elections as elites tactically shift repression to pre-electoral periods in order to discourage voters from going to the polls; or it might take place later after elections if elites decide on employing violence to deal with certain segments of society for voting in particular ways (Van Ham & Lindberg, 2015;Taylor et al, 2017).…”

Electoral violence prevention: what works?

“…10 We also know that violence is more likely if major groups experience or fear exclusion from political decision-making due to ethnic discrimination, electoral fraud or other deviations from democratic norms. 11 The perceived risk of exclusion raises the stakes of elections and makes groups more willing to resort to violence. 12 It follows that the risk of violence at elections can be lowered by increasing political inclusion through, among other things, improving electoral conduct and also by altering perceptions of likely exclusion and of the intentions of actors in the electoral process.…”

Does corporate social responsibility initiative dissuade the increasing electoral violence in Sub-Saharan Africa? Evidence from Nigeria’s oil producing region

“…Despite the fact that electoral violence can be a broad concept, studies of it have normally depended on a number of general measures (Birch and Muchlinski, 2017). Electoral violence has been perceived as violent protests against election results, political parties or opposition groups; in addition to attacks by gangs and mobs against evident manifestations of elections, like polling places (UNDP, 2009; Alihodzic, 2012). Electoral violence can take place before elections as elites tactically shift repression to pre-electoral periods to discourage voters from going to the polls; or it might take place later after elections if elites decide on using violence to deal with certain segments of society for voting in particular ways (Van Ham and Lindberg, 2015; Taylor et al , 2017).…”