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This introductory chapter provides an overview of electoral violence. Electoral violence includes political violence that takes place during the electoral cycle and is linked causally to electoral processes, or, more formally, coercive force, directed toward electoral actors and/or objects, that occurs in connection with electoral competition, where “coercive force” includes threats, unlawful detention, forcible curtailment of movement or displacement, and attacks that cause actual bodily harm. Why are elections in some places generally peaceful, whereas other societies regularly experience conflictual polls? Why is one election in a country peaceful and the next violent? This book aims to provide a comprehensive account of the use of force to manipulate competitive electoral processes, with a particular emphasis on national-level elections held during peacetime in the post-Second World War period. The focus of analysis is on the strategic behavior of incumbent and opposition actors—also referred to as state and nonstate actors—with particular (but not exclusive) emphasis on electoral authoritarian and hybrid states.

This chapter explains the hypotheses regarding state violence, with respect to the choice situations faced by leaders at election time. State and state-affiliated actors, including incumbent political leaders, have the greatest degree of latitude in selecting electoral strategies, and in particular deciding whether to use violence. The hypotheses are tested empirically on the basis of global data sets of electoral violence and covariates drawn from a variety of sources, supplemented by case studies based on qualitative data. The quantitative analyses confirm the connection between the structure of power (the relative strength of democratic and informal institutions) and electoral violence, and find also a strong empirical link between state-initiated violence and electoral misconduct in contexts where democratic constraints are lacking. Case studies of Zimbabwe, Syria, Belarus, and Paraguay show how state-initiated electoral violence forms part of political economies regulated by informal institutions of corruption and patronage.

This chapter provides quantitative data analysis and case studies of electoral-violence prevention techniques. Implicit in the academic study of electoral violence is the assumption that it is a problem to be addressed by programs specifically designed to reduce conflict. It is thus necessary in any comprehensive account of this phenomenon to devote careful consideration to the strategies that have been employed to mitigate electoral violence. In quantitative analysis, the chapter finds that electoral governance matters more than formal institutional design in efforts to contain electoral violence. Macedonia and Haiti are the focus of case studies that serve to deepen the understanding of these patterns, demonstrating the importance of electoral-authority capacity and political will in enabling effective violence control strategies.

This chapter develops the study's main argument as to the incentives under which state and nonstate actors will employ violent means of shaping electoral outcomes, in addition to alternatives such as vote buying, fraud, or programmatic competition. This argument posits that electoral violence is shaped by the balance of democratic institutions and corruption, which conditions the costs of being excluded from power and the benefits of winning office. In electoral authoritarian and hybrid regimes, rulers are reluctant to open themselves to the risk of democratic competition. The chapter then sets out an account of why violence might be used to amplify and/or complement other types of electoral manipulation, including vote buying and misconduct. The observable implications of this argument are detailed in the form of a series of testable hypotheses.

This chapter discusses nonstate electoral violence, exploring the circumstances under which nonstate actors resort to violent means to achieve their ends, how state-initiated violence and nonstate violence interact, and also how nonstate electoral violence is produced. It demonstrates a strong and consistent empirical association between violence committed by nonstate actors and corruption, together with a link between this form of violence and vote buying suggestive of carrot-and-stick tactics. The chapter then explores the use made by nonstate actors of violent electoral protest as a mobilizational device, and the techniques whereby politicians enlist vigilante groups and proxies to carry out high-risk forms of violence. Analytically, mobilizational violence can be understood as taking two principal forms: protests against state electoral manipulation and violence between competing informal groupings seeking to secure the loyalty of their clients. Case studies of Pakistan, Ghana, Kyrgyzstan, and Côte d'Ivoire help to probe these casual mechanisms and to analyze the production of electoral violence.

This chapter focuses on the strategic dynamics inherent in different geographic contexts and different time periods. It considers variations in electoral violence across the electoral cycle, over time, and across regions within countries. The analysis of strategic interactions between actors over the course of the electoral cycle suggests that retaliation can be a factor in the use of physical force, especially in the two months leading up to polling day. Case studies of the Philippines, Tanzania, Jamaica, and Ukraine demonstrate that uneven state capacity and the geography of partisanship help to account for geographic variations within countries in levels of electoral violence. The Tanzanian and Jamaican case studies also show how the way in which leaders and citizenries respond to each other's behavior over time can generate cycles of violence that reforms often fail to fully break.

This concluding chapter summarizes the main findings of the book and draws out their implications for political science as well as for policies on institutional design, electoral administration, electoral assistance, and diplomacy. It considers the circumstances under which different strategies of electoral-violence prevention are likely to be successful and it provides a series of empirically grounded recommendations for the policy and practitioner communities. Though the previous chapters have sought to shed more systematic comparative light on electoral violence than has been available in previous work, the study of conflictual elections remains a relatively new area of research. Much exciting work will undoubtedly be carried out on this topic in the years to come. This emerging field may prove particularly relevant in the era of democratic backsliding that the world appears to be entering, and the role of violence in electoral processes throughout the modern history of democratic voting practices is a subject whose detailed analysis is long overdue.

This chapter examines three country cases in which the international enforcement of democratic norms either failed to produce meaningful electoral change or had, at best, partial or superficial effects: Armenia, Kenya and Cambodia. Examining these cases generates insights about the scope conditions of the theory and sheds further light on the relationship between international actors and the opposition. The cases suggest, for instance, that in the absence of a minimally viable and cohesive opposition, international pressure is likely to produce only limited, cosmetic improvements in electoral quality. The ability of international actors to produce even marginal changes under such conditions depends, in turn, on the consistency and strength of the enforcement effort itself.

Chapter 8 addresses arguments suggesting politics is simply a hostile space, drawing on examples from both the theory and practice of politics. It then turns to several bodies of work problematizing these assumptions. The literature on political and electoral violence, for example, contends that using force to achieve political ends poses a threat to democracy and, as such, is illegitimate. More recent efforts in both activism and research focus on violence against three types of political actors: politicians, activists, and journalists. The chapter argues that despite running largely in parallel to one another, these debates converge in arguing that violence not only harms democracy—but also violates personal integrity, undermining human rights.

When Syria’s political leaders left Paris in the fall of 1936, their focus was on the new Franco-Syrian Treaty that promised their independence. On stopping in Istanbul en route to their triumphant homecoming, they were blindsided by Turkish officials and a Turkish press that demanded a different future for the Sanjak [province] of Alexandretta separate from Syria. Chapter 1 sketches the background of the contested territory, the ideological context in which Syria demanded independence and Turkey claimed the Sanjak, and the violence that ensued as Turkish activists mobilized opposition to the Sanjak’s participation in the November 1936 elections to the Syrian Parliament. For the Syrian regime, these elections were the first step toward their promised independence from France, the colonial power upon which they had become paradoxically dependent if they hoped to fulfill their dreams of independence, a policy they called Honorable Cooperation.

This chapter evaluates Pakistan's history of armed politics. The combination of a contested but powerful articulation of Muslim nationalism stretching back to the colonial period with the Pakistan Army's particular version of this project has led to a relatively consistent threat perception and corresponding pattern of armed politics. The state's security managers have viewed ethno-linguistic separatists as ideologically opposed, while having a complex but ultimately more sympathetic view of Islamist armed actors as existing in the gray zone or being ideologically aligned. The chapter thematically explores state responses to linguistic/regional armed groups, strategies toward “Islamist” actors, and electoral violence. It then offers a deeper discussion of patterns of discrimination in targeting of armed groups in Pakistan's Northwest between 2002 and 2015. Finally, the chapter concludes with implications for understanding Pakistani nationalism and security policy.

This chapter explores political violence. Elections captured Indians’ imaginations from the moment of Independence. Since the first ever voting extravaganza, elections have come to dominate public life, to the point where some observers speak of India as a psephocracy, a political system in which elections become the end-all. But the belief that Indian elections are the greatest show on earth, and that they are proof positive of democracy as a living reality, is challenged by a second consideration: the violent side to the elections that is relatively less reported and understood. Elections are often distorted by money, violence, coercion, and intimidation, robbing them of their function as a fair means of democratic representation and accountability. Criminality is an asset, and the unmistakably despotic trend in Indian politics is that people who run for office and go on to wield power are both increasingly criminal.

This chapter examines the functioning of the feminist NGO Associated Women of Zimbabwe (AWZ) to highlight varieties of feminism and the influence of a political and economic crisis on a feminist organization in Zimbabwe at the turn of the twenty-first century. After providing a brief history of AWZ, the chapter considers its experiences to demonstrate how women consciously organize to fight sexism in Zimbabwean society. It then explores AWZ's role in the political process as it advocated for women and promoted women's civil rights in the context of increasing political competition, electoral violence, and a declining economy. It also discusses cosmopolitan feminism in Zimbabwe and the relationship between AWZ and the state—especially in relation to the politics of inclusion, state-sponsored violence, and economic decline; explains how an organization that once stood against government lost its edge, even as government became more oppressive; and analyzes the fiction of Zimbabwean novelist Tsitsi Dangarembga. The chapter concludes by showing what happens to an NGO dependent on international donors when the money stream begins to dry up.