Pre-election violence and territorial control: Political dominance and subnational election violence in polarized African electoral systems
| Author | Edward Goldring,Michael Wahman |
| Published date | 01 January 2020 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0022343319884990 |
| Date | 01 January 2020 |
| Subject Matter | Research Articles |
Pre-election violence and territorial control:
Political dominance and subnational
election violence in polarized African
electoral systems
Michael Wahman
Department of Political Science, Michigan State University
Edward Goldring
Department of Political Science, University of Missouri
Abstract
Cross-national research on African electoral politics has argued that competition increasesthe prospects for pre-election
violence. However, there is a dearth of systematic research on the effectof political competition on pre-election violence
at the subnational level. We theorize that in African democracies characterized by competition at the national level but
low subnational competitiveness (polarization), violence is often a manifestation of turf war and a tool to maintain and
disrupt political territorial control. Consequently, contrary to expectations derived from the cross-national literature,
pre-election violence is more likely in uncompetitive than competitive constituencies. Locally dominant as well as
locally weakparties have incentives to perpetrate violence in uncompetitive constituencies. For locallydominant parties,
violence is a tool to shrink the democratic space in their strongholds and maintain territorial control. For locally weak
parties, violence can disturb the dominance of the opponent and protect their presence in hostile territory. We
hypothesize that pre-election violence will be particularly common in opposition strongholds. In such locations, ruling
parties can leverage their superiorrepressive resources to defend their ability to campaign, while the opposition can use
their local capacity to reinforce the politics of territoriality. We test our hypotheses with original constituency-level
election violence data from the 2016 Zambian elections. Data comefrom expert surveys of domestic election observers
and represent a novel way of measuring low-level variations in election violence. Our analysis shows patterns of pre-
election violence consistent with our theory on pre-election violence as a territorial tool.
Keywords
Africa, conflict, election manipulation, election violence, geography, Zambia
A recent estimate of election violence across sub-Saharan
Africa shows that a majority of all election campaigns
featured some degree of violence (Straus & Taylor,
2012). Empirical research has suggested that competitive
elections, where the ultimate outcome is uncertain, are
more prone to violence than less competitive contests.
When competition is high, political elites are more will-
ing to engage in illicit tactics, including violence, to
maintain or gain power over the state machinery and
vital resources (Fjelde & Ho
¨glund, 2016; Hafner-
Burton, Hyde & Jablonski, 2014).
The relationship between competition and election
violence has been confirmed in several African countries
such as Kenya (Kanyinga, 2009; Boone, 2011), Co
ˆte
d’Ivoire (Straus, 2011), Nigeria (Bratton, 2008), and
Zimbabwe (Bratton & Masunungure, 2007; LeBas,
2006), where political actors have resorted to violence
to manage electoral uncertainty. However, apart from
Corresponding author:
wahmanmi@msu.edu
Journal of Peace Research
2020, Vol. 57(1) 93–110
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DOI: 10.1177/0022343319884990
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high levels of competition, the aforementioned countries
have one additional similarity: they all have highly regio-
nalized voting patterns and consequently low levels of
subnational competition. Kenya, Co
ˆte d’Ivoire, Nigeria,
and Zimbabwe all belong to a group of countries we will
here refer to as polarized electoral systems. We define
these systems as those that combinehigh levels of national
competition with low levels of subnational competition.
Such systems make up a great sha re of Africa’s more
competitive democracies, where electoral patterns remain
highly regionalized and local bloc voting is prevalent
despite increased levels of national competition (Ichino
& Nathan, 2013; Wahman, 2017). Polarized electoral
systems introduce an important puzzle: if competition
breeds violence, how can violence persist in countries
where few subnational locations are competitive?
The conventional view of competition and pre-
election violence does not offer much of an explanation
of persistently high levels of election violence in polarized
electoral systems. Like other forms of manipulation, pre-
election violence is associated with costs (Robinson &
Torvik, 2009). All else being equal, political actors
should be more willing to bear those costs when compe-
tition is high locally and nationally, particularly if local
elections run concurrently with national elections and
parties are fighting to win marginal parliamentary seats.
1
This leaves us with three possible explanations for why
polarized electoral systems may experience high levels of
election violence despite low levels of local competition:
(i) subnational levels of competition are inconsequential
for aggregate levels of violence; (ii) most violence in
polarized electoral systems occurs within the rare islands
of competitiveness; or (iii) competition plays a markedly
different role in determining election violence at the
national and subnational levels. We will make an argu-
ment for the last proposition.
In this article, we shift the focus from the national to
the subnational level to uncover a more complex rela-
tionship between competition and election violence in
polarized electoral systems than previously acknowl-
edged. Although most quantitative work on election vio-
lence has studied cross-national variation (Daxecker,
2014; Fjelde & Ho
¨glund, 2016; Fjelde, 2020; Hafner
Burton, Hyde & Jablonski, 2014; Straus & Taylor,
2012; Taylor, Pevehouse & Straus, 2017; von Borzys-
kowski, 2019), several recent studies have concentrated
on subnational dynamics of election-related conflict (e.g.
Daxecker, 2020; Dercon & Guite
´rrez-Romero, 2012;
Goldring & Wahman, 2018; Malik, 2018; Reeder &
Seeberg, 2018). However, these studies do not theorize
that competition plays a markedly different role at the
subnational level than it does at the cross-national level.
Focusing particularly on pre-election violence,
2
the
most common form of election violence in sub-
Saharan Africa (Daxecker, 2014; Taylor, Pevehouse &
Straus, 2017), we argue that subnational dominance –
where one party is significantly stronger than its closest
rival – rather than competition, is conducive to higher
levels of pre-election violence. Thus, our argument for
the subnational level contrasts with the dominant argu-
ment presented in the cross-national literature.
We argue that political geography is crucial to under-
standing elections in polarized electoral systems. Pre-
election violence in polarized electoral systems can be
understood as a tool for what Robert Sack (1986: 1)
labels ‘territoriality’, that is, ‘a spatial strategy to affect,
influence, or control resources and people, by controlling
area’. We argue that pre-election violence fills a dual role.
First, it can be used to shrink the democratic space, by
preventing effective campaigning by rival parties inside a
party’s stronghold. Second, it can be used to break the
politics of territoriality and defend a party’s presence
inside an area dominated by a rival party. It is this
combination of high-level national competitiveness and
low-level subnational competition that is particularly
conducive to violence. On the one hand, parties have
incentives to use violence to tip the balance in nationally
competitive elections. On the other hand, subnational
dominance makes violence a useful tool to preserve and
contest the politics of territoriality. If competition is high
at the national level, parties cannot afford defection in
their strongholds. Without securing super majorities in
their strongholds they are likely to lose close national
elections. We argue that pre-election violence is more
likely in all uncompetitive constituencies, but the highest
level of violence will be observed in opposition
1
See, for example, Birch (2007) on how single member district
elections incentivize electoral manipulation to tip elections in
competitive constituencies.
2
We use Ho
¨glund’s (2009: 417) definition of pre-election violence
as violence carried out before an election ‘to influence the electoral
process and in extension its outcome’. Accordingly, pre-election
violence should be understood as a tool of electoral manipulation
(Birch, 2011). The perpetrators of violence may vary, and the
targets of violence can include a wide array of people, such as
voters, candidates, and election o fficials, but also objects, such as
campaign vehicles, roads, or party headquarters. Pre-election
violence in the most extreme cases may result in fatalities, although
election violence need not entail fatalities.
94 journal of PEACE RESEARCH 57(1)
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