The Association of Electoral Volatility and Religious Riots in India

Abstract

Why are religious riots between Hindus and Muslims endemic in some states of India and not in others? Scholarship on the topic is divided between those arguing that electoral competition increases the occurrence of such riots and those arguing that electoral competition decreases the occurrence of such riots. Both types of explanations assume a relationship between political parties and religious violence, but they ignore voting behavior. This paper accounts for party system instability or change, measured in terms of electoral volatility, to argue that electoral volatility in the Indian party system is a key overlooked determinant of religious violence. Specifically, higher levels of electoral volatility, implying high switching of party allegiances by voters, may indicate the process of ethnic outbidding that causes violence.

How party competition shapes ethnic parties’ positions on migration and immigration

“…Such claims by an organization to be the true representative of an ethnic group are typically accompanied by an inherently exclusive and illiberal form of sub-national nationalism and a strong boundary-making against ethnic others, i.e. other minorities or immigrants (DeVotta, 2005; Suhas and Banerjee, 2021). For instance, the radicalization and anti-immigrant rhetoric of the Vlaams Belang in Belgium can be directly attributed to the competition between various Flemish parties and their struggle for the ‘true’ agents of the Flemish national movement (Adam and Deschouwer, 2016).…”