Fear of Electoral Violence and its Impact on Political Knowledge in Sub-Saharan Africa

Elections are held in nearly all countries in the contemporary world. Yet despite their aim of allowing for peaceful transfers of power, elections held outside of consolidated democracies are often accompanied by substantial violence. This special issue introduction article establishes electoral violence as a subtype of political violence with distinct analytical and empirical dynamics. We highlight how electoral violence is distinct from other types of organized violence, but also how it is qualitatively different from nonviolent electoral manipulation. The article then surveys what we have learned about the causes and consequences of electoral violence, identifies important research gaps in the literature, and proceeds to discuss the articles included in the special issue. The contributions advance research in four domains: the micro-level targeting and consequences of electoral violence, the institutional foundations of electoral violence, the conditions leading to high-stakes elections, and electoral violence in the context of other forms of organized violence. The individual articles are methodologically and geographically diverse, encompassing ethnography, survey vignette and list experiments and survey data, quantitative analyses of subnational and crossnational event data, and spanning Africa, Latin America, and Asia.

Section: What We Know About Electoral Violencementioning

confidence: 99%

Electoral violence: An introduction

Birch

Daxecker

Höglund

2020

“…There are at least three reasons for this: (1) because exposure to political violence might have caused some voters to seek out more independent and local political information, (2) newspaper readers might be more fearful of election violence because they are more exposed to news about crime and violence, not because they are more informed, and (3) because of the timing of the AFB6, we have to rely on events from past rather than future elections. First, several empirical studies have shown that past experience of violence motivates individuals to seek more information (Badiuzzaman & Murshed, 2014; Soderstrom, 2018) and to boost their political engagement, especially in terms of participation and community leadership (Blattman, 2009; Bellows & Miguel, 2009). To assess this issue, we instrument newspaper readership via location-specific Protestant mission density in the early 20th century.…”

Section: Empirical Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

Dangerously informed: Voter information and pre-electoral violence in Africa

Borzyskowski

Kuhn

2020

A considerable literature examines the effect of voter information on candidate strategies and voter–politician interactions in the developing world. The voter information literature argues that information can improve accountability because more informed voters are harder to woo with traditional campaign tools, such as ethnic appeals and vote-buying. However, this literature has largely ignored the reaction of political candidates and thus may reach conclusions that are overly optimistic regarding the impact of information on electoral accountability. We argue that voter information can increase electoral violence in developing countries where politicians face fewer institutional constraints on their campaign tactics. When violence is used as a campaign strategy, more informed electorates are more at risk because they are harder to sway through alternative campaign techniques. Using data from 35 African countries, we show that respondents receiving their news predominantly from newspapers are a good proxy for informed voters because they differ in terms of their political attitudes from respondents consuming no news or receiving it via other channels. Combining the geo-coded survey data with pre-electoral violence event data, we find a robust positive association between newspaper readership and fear of and exposure to campaign violence. This finding contributes to the micro-foundations of election violence and adds a cautionary note for voter information programs.

“…Much of the theoretical and empirical research in the field has sought to assess when and where election violence will occur, rather than what effects it has, with several important exceptions. Recent studies analyze correlations between pre-election violence and subsequent turnout (Bekoe & Burchard, 2017), ruling party vote share (Young, 2016), and political attitudes, beliefs, and knowledge (Linke, 2013; Söderström, 2017). Yet, little of this research is based on methodologies that enable estimates of causal relationships between violence and subsequent behavior.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Who dissents? Self-efficacy and opposition action after state-sponsored election violence

Young

2020

Reactions to acts of state-sponsored election violence and other forms of repression vary greatly across individuals. This article develops a theory that the psychological characteristic of self-efficacy moderates opposition supporters’ reactions to state-sponsored election violence. I use data from an original survey and in-depth qualitative interviews with opposition supporters in Zimbabwe to illustrate and test this theory. Self-efficacy is a strong predictor of intention to take action in support of the opposition after episodes of state-sponsored election violence and is related to the emotional reactions that opposition supporters have after violent events. Specifically, people who are higher in self-efficacy report that they would feel more anger relative to fear after episodes of state-sponsored election violence. The relationship between self-efficacy and persistence in pro-opposition action after violence is similar in magnitude to variables that the existing literature argues are the most important predictors of dissent in repressive environments, including strength of identification with the opposition and gender. These results provide empirical support for the assumption in many collective action theories that psychological characteristics create variation in dissent in repressive environments. Understanding how individual psychological differences can shape reactions to coercive violence may help explain why forms of repression like state-sponsored election violence have such unpredictable effects on subsequent pro-opposition mobilization.