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

How do parties target intimidation and vote-buying during elections? Parties prefer the use of carrots over sticks because they are in the business of getting voters to like them and expect higher legitimacy costs if observers expose intimidation. However, their brokers sometimes choose intimidation because it is cheaper and possibly more effective than vote-buying. Specifically, we contend that brokers use intimidation when the cost of buying votes is prohibitively high; in interactions with voters among whom the commitment problem inherent to clientelistic transactions is difficult to overcome; and in contexts where the risk of being denounced for violence is lower. We probe our hypotheses about the different profile of voters targeted with vote-buying and intimidation using two list experiments included in an original survey conducted during the 2011 Guatemalan general elections. The list experiments were designed to overcome the social desirability bias associated with direct questions about illegal or stigmatized behaviors. Our quantitative analysis is supplemented by interviews with politicians from various parties. The analysis largely confirms our expectations about the diametrically opposed logics of vote-buying and intimidation targeting, and illuminates how both are key components of politics in a country with weak parties and high levels of violence.

“…This is consistent with von Borzyskowski & Kuhn’s (2020) finding that violence is often directed against voters who cannot be persuaded by other means.…”

supporting

confidence: 90%

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

González-Ocantos

Jonge

Meléndez

et al. 2019

“…Finally, the findings show that civilian agency plays a role in election violence. The study therefore adds to the recent body of research exploring the spatial patterns and micro-foundations of election-related contention (Fjelde & Höglund, 2018; von Borzyskowski & Kuhn, 2020).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 93%

“…Especially in war-torn countries, the incentives of armed actors rather than the behaviours of voters may explain election violence (Birnir & Gohdes, 2018; Staniland, 2015). Moreover, von Borzyskowski & Kuhn (2020) show that politicians use more violence against ‘informed’ participants. Although their study looks at the effects of media exposure, security-enhancing effects of education interventions could be offset when politicians target the informed.…”

Section: Information Election Violence and Peacekeeping Interventionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mitigating election violence locally: UN peacekeepers’ election-education campaigns in Côte d’Ivoire

Smidt

2020

False information, rumours and hate speech can incite violent protest and rioting during electoral periods. To counter such disinformation, United Nations peacekeeping operations (PKOs) routinely organize election-education events. While researchers tend to study how PKOs affect armed group and state behaviour, this study shifts the focus to civilians. It argues that PKOs’ election education reduces violent protest and rioting involving civilians during electoral periods via three pathways. First, learning about PKOs’ electoral security assistance during election-education events may convince people that political opponents cannot violently disturb elections, thereby mitigating fears of election violence. Second, election-education events provide politically relevant information that can strengthen political efficacy and people’s ability to make use of peaceful political channels. Finally, peace messages during election-education events can change people’s calculus about the utility and appropriateness of violent behaviour. Together, these activities mitigate fears, reduce political alienation and counter civilians’ willingness to get involved in violence. To test these expectations, I combine survey data on people’ perceptions and attitudes, events data on violent protest and rioting, and a novel dataset on local-level election-education events carried out by the PKO in Côte d’Ivoire before four elections held between 2010 and 2016. The results show that when the PKO is perceived to be an impartial arbiter, its election-education events have violence-mitigating effects at the individual and subnational levels.

“…These contributions show that violence can be an expensive resource for perpetrators, and one they will use selectively against targets that are most likely to respond, least likely to protest, and most likely to be of use in delivering the ends envisaged. As articles by von Borzyskowski & Kuhn (2020) and González-Ocantos et al (2020) show, poverty, urban–rural status, and political knowledge are important characteristics that influence targeting. Some of the findings in this special issue suggest potentially troubling implications for voter information campaigns, showing that violence is likely to be targeted at groups who then anticipate threats and adapt their behavior accordingly (González-Ocantos et al, 2020; von Borzyskowski & Kuhn, 2020; Klaus, 2020; Gutiérrez-Romero & LeBas, 2020; Young, 2020).…”

Section: Contributions Of the Special Issuementioning

confidence: 99%

Electoral violence: An introduction

Birch

Daxecker

Höglund

2020

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.