Elections and Civil War in Africa

Abstract

The view that multiparty elections in changing authoritarian regimes should be held sooner rather than later has been increasingly under attack. Critics argue that, under conditions of low institutional development, multiparty elections may lead to violence and civil war, rather than to the peaceful allocation of authority that everyone desires. Starting from the premise that elections are strategically timed and endogenous in transitioning authoritarian regimes, that is, more likely to be held when violence is imminent, we show that for Africa, the continent with the lowest levels of political institutionalization, elections do not increase the probability of a civil war initiation. In fact, for the post-Cold War period, the holding of multiparty elections is actually associated with a substantial reduction in the probability of civil war onset. To account for this pattern, we develop an informational theory of elections held under conditions that prevail in the post-Cold War, when foreign powers are reluctant to provide direct support for dictators (or their opponents) and elections are more reflective of the true level of a leader’s strength. We argue that, under these conditions, elections may prevent the eruption of a civil war that is already imminent, through two mechanisms: they may deter a weak opposition from initiating a war they are likely to lose or they may induce a weak dictator to offer ways to share power with the opposition.

Cues to Coup Plotters

“…Our argument is compatible with recent literature on how elections yield information about the mobilization capacity of the political opposition (e.g., Little 2012;Fearon 2011), and very recent work on how coups can be a response to public signals about opposition strength (Casper and Tyson 2014). Our study is a concrete application of these arguments to the case of the postelectoral coup (see also Pop-Eleches and Robertson 2011;Cheibub, Hays and Savun 2012). A premise here is the claim that one of the reasons why autocrats hold elections is to get information on the regime-opposition balance of power.…”

“…Related to the deterrence argument presented earlier, elections have been argued to provide the incumbent with information about both regime and opposition support (e.g., Cox 2009;Cheibub, Hays, and Savun 2012;Pop-Eleches and Robertson 2011). This means that incumbents can use this information to co-opt or silence popular rivals, or concede to popular demands.…”

“…An alternative way to gauge support for the regime is through elections. Elections in autocracies, however flawed, will often yield information about the relative standing of the regime in the population, and on the balance of power between the regime and the opposition (for related work that makes this argument, see Pop-Eleches and Robertson 2011;Cheibub, Hays, and Savun 2012). Information is revealed through elections in two ways: (1) the incumbent candidate can either suffer an unexpectedly large backlash in the election-which can happen even when elections have been rigged-or (2) the election outcome can trigger popular protests by an opposition that feels strengthened enough to engage in mass protests.…”

“…However, in spite of many such examples of postelectoral coups, very little has been done to systematically investigate the relationship between elections and coup attempts. In this article, we expand on the literature viewing elections and nominally democratic institutions in autocracies as a means to co-opt the opposition (e.g., Gandhi andPrzeworski 2006, 2007), to contain pressures arising from internal regime elites (Boix and Svolik 2013;Svolik 2012), and, most closely related to our argument, as channels through which to send and receive information about the incumbent-opposition balance of power (Cheibub, Hays, and Savun 2012;Cox 2009;Little 2012;Fearon 2011). While recognizing the finding that electoral institutions can stabilize autocracies with a high coup risk (e.g., Gandhi andPrzeworski 2006, 2007), we argue that the election event can increase coup risk when the election reveals that the incumbent is severely weakened.…”

Third-Party Actors and the Success of Democracy: How Electoral Commissions, Courts, and Observers Shape Incentives for Electoral Manipulation and Post-Election Protests

“…See Acemoglu and Robinson (2001), Boix (2003), Fearon (2011), Przeworski (2011), Przeworski, Rivero, and Xi (2012, and Cheibub, Hays, and Savun (2012).…”