Carrots and sticks: Experimental evidence of vote-buying and voter intimidation in Guatemala

Existing research on the causes of electoral violence has focused on structural determinants and election-specific characteristics but has paid less attention to the role of political agents that contest elections. This study addresses this gap by examining the relationship between the organizational strength of political parties and the risk of electoral violence. The study argues that strong political parties enhance the prospect for peaceful electoral dynamics for two reasons. First, having strong party organizations reduce incentives for violent electoral manipulation because these organizations enable more cost-efficient ways to mobilize voters. Second, strong party organizations constrain political actors from deploying electoral violence, both at the leadership and grassroot levels. The relationship between political party strength and electoral violence is studied by combining global data on the overall strength of political parties in the polity with data on violence across all national elections from 1946 to 2010. The statistical analysis accounts for a number of potentially confounding variables related to formal political institutions and election-specific characteristics. The results point to a statistically significant and substantively important association between strong political parties and a reduced risk of violent electoral conflict.

Section: Existing Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Theoretical Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

Political party strength and electoral violence

Fjelde

2020

“… 4 However, Gonzalez-Ocantos et al (2020) find the opposite at the individual level in Guatemala, showing that rural voters experience more intimidation, while urban voters are more often targeted with clientelism. …”

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confidence: 99%

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

Daxecker

2019

Elections held outside of advanced, industrialized democracies can turn violent because elites use coercion to demobilize political opponents. The literature has established that closely contested elections are associated with more violence. I depart from this emphasis on competitiveness by highlighting how institutional biases in electoral systems, in particular uneven apportionment, affect incentives for violence. Malapportionment refers to a discrepancy between the share of legislative seats and the share of population, violating the ‘one person, one vote’ principle. Drawing on recent work on malapportionment establishing that overrepresented districts are targeted with clientelist strategies, are more homogenous, and are biased in favor of district-level incumbent parties, I argue that overrepresented districts present fewer incentives for using violence. In contrast, elites in well-apportioned or underrepresented districts exert less control over electoral outcomes because such districts have more heterogenous voter preferences, raising incumbent and opposition demands to employ violence. I examine the effects of malapportionment on violence using constituency-level elections data and new, disaggregated, and geocoded event data on the incidence of election violence in India. Results from six parliamentary elections from 1991 to 2009 show that electoral violence is less prevalent in overrepresented constituencies, and that violence increases in equally apportioned and moderately underrepresented districts. The analysis establishes additional observable implications of the argument for district voter homogeneity and incumbent victory, accounts for confounders such as urbanization and state-level partisanship, and validates measures of election violence. The findings illustrate that institutional biases shape incentives for electoral violence.

“… 2 For post-election violence victimization, see Dercon & Gutiérrez-Romero, 2012; Gutiérrez-Romero, 2014. For a study on the 2011 Guatemala election and an argument about targeting poor and rural citizens, see Gonzales-Ocantos et al, 2020. …”

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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.