Pre-election violence and territorial control: Political dominance and subnational election violence in polarized African electoral systems

Abstract

Cross-national research on African electoral politics has argued that competition increases the prospects for pre-election violence. However, there is a dearth of systematic research on the effect of political competition on pre-election violence at the subnational level. We theorize that in African democracies characterized by competition at the national level but low subnational competitiveness (polarization), violence is often a manifestation of turf war and a tool to maintain and disrupt political territorial control. Consequently, contrary to expectations derived from the cross-national literature, pre-election violence is more likely in uncompetitive than competitive constituencies. Locally dominant as well as locally weak parties have incentives to perpetrate violence in uncompetitive constituencies. For locally dominant parties, violence is a tool to shrink the democratic space in their strongholds and maintain territorial control. For locally weak parties, violence can disturb the dominance of the opponent and protect their presence in hostile territory. We hypothesize that pre-election violence will be particularly common in opposition strongholds. In such locations, ruling parties can leverage their superior repressive resources to defend their ability to campaign, while the opposition can use their local capacity to reinforce the politics of territoriality. We test our hypotheses with original constituency-level election violence data from the 2016 Zambian elections. Data come from expert surveys of domestic election observers and represent a novel way of measuring low-level variations in election violence. Our analysis shows patterns of pre-election violence consistent with our theory on pre-election violence as a territorial tool.

Electoral violence: An introduction

“…Land reform might thus inadvertently raise the stakes of elections, and increase the potential for violence. Challenging the view that competitive elections experience more violence, which rests on macro-level assessments, Wahman & Goldring (2020) argue that parties use violence against minorities and core opponent voters in their own strongholds as a means of maintaining dominance. Their analysis of Zambia finds that incumbent and opposition strongholds experience more violence, especially in constituencies with good connectivity.…”

“…This means that the experience of electoral violence will in most contexts be highly differentiated, with some citizens having very little cause to fear it and others perceiving elections to be extremely dangerous events. Moreover, Wahman & Goldring (2020) show that the fact that competitive elections are more violent in the aggregate does not imply that perpetrators target voters in the most competitive areas.…”

“…High-stakes elections A third theme pertains to the stakes in elections and their effect on violence. Articles examine the underlying conditions contributing to high-stake elections (Klaus, 2020) and question the conventional wisdom linking competitiveness to greater risk of violence (Wahman & Goldring, 2020;Daxecker, 2020). Klaus (2020) examines how the distribution of land rights in Kenya shapes people's trust in state institutions and perceptions of the electoral process.…”

Unequal votes, unequal violence: Malapportionment and election violence in India

“…Town- and state-level empirical results indicate that greater party competition increases violence (Wilkinson, 2004). Recent work on Zambia, however, indicates that dominance rather than close competition leads to more violence (Wahman & Goldring, 2020). Rauschenbach & Paula (2019) also find that African voters in opposition strongholds are more fearful of violence.…”

Political party strength and electoral violence

“… 13 As noted by Wahman & Goldring (2020), party dominance could also lay the ground for coercive electoral strategies. …”