Electoral contention and violence (ECAV): A new dataset

Abstract

Recent elections in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Côte d’Ivoire, Egypt, Iraq, Kenya, Nigeria, and Pakistan have displayed substantial contestation and violence. A growing literature explores the causes and consequences of electoral contention and violence, but researchers lack comprehensive, disaggregated data establishing a substantive link between elections and violence. The Electoral Contention and Violence (ECAV) dataset conceptualizes electoral contention as nonviolent or violent events of contestation by state or non-state actors related to national elections. The data contain more than 18,000 events of election-related contention covering 136 countries holding competitive national elections between 1990 and 2012. This article describes the scope of ECAV, presents the project’s definition of electoral contention and the variables included, and outlines the coding procedure. We then compare ECAV to other datasets on electoral contention. Cross-national and subnational analyses of electoral competition and violence show that the data are useful for assessing the global and subnational implications of existing theories. ECAV addresses current data limitations by focusing on election-related contention, by using clear criteria to determine whether events are election-related, and by identifying the timing, geocoded location, and actors involved.

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

“…The SCAD dataset records only six department-months with election-related violence between 2009 and 2016. To alleviate concerns regarding operationalization, the robustness tests show similar results for Hypothesis 1 if the analyses use the Electoral Contention and Violence (ECAV) dataset by Daxecker, Amicarelli & Jung (2019) available for the 2010 and 2011 elections. Figure 4 shows the temporal distribution of all violent protest and riots compared to all other types of violence, and Figure 5 shows their spatial distribution.…”

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

“…To test this hypothesis, I create two dependent variables measuring the presence or absence of election violence in each constituency-election-year before or on election day. Data for events of election violence come from the Electoral Contention and Violence Data (ECAV) described in Daxecker, Amicarelli & Jung (2019a). The data are coded by human coders from newswire articles from three sources.…”

“…The data are coded by human coders from newswire articles from three sources. Electoral contention is defined as ‘public acts of mobilization, contestation, or coercion by state or non-state actors that are used to affect the electoral process or that arise in the context of electoral competition’ (Daxecker, Amicarelli & Jung, 2019a). 8 I drop nonviolent events, those occurring after election day, and those without subnational location information.…”

“… 8 For each event, coders were required to establish a connection to national elections. For more details, consult the codebook (Daxecker, Amicarelli & Jung, 2019b). …”

“… 10 The most relevant groups are Sikh militants, Kashmir insurgents, the Naxalite movement, the United Liberation Front of Assam, and Tripura insurgents. For more details on armed conflicts and how they relate to election violence in India, see the codebook of the ECAV project (Daxecker, Amicarelli & Jung, 2019b: 36–37). …”