Effect of progovernmental pre-electoral violence upon electoral outcome

Abstract

Electoral violence can have dire consequences for a society, but remains a strategy employed by incumbents to secure electoral victory. This paper explores if electoral violence instigated by progovernment side actually does increase the incumbent’s probability of electoral victory. The novelty of the question derives from taking into account a differentiation between the instigating side as progovernment or anti-government, which previous studies have not done. The argument is that as the opposition is likely to have other motives and resources available than the incumbent, anti-government violence should target other spectrums of the population and thus have a different effect on the electoral outcome than progovernment violence.  The findings give consistent statistical significance to a positive relationship between progovernment instigated violence and probability of incumbent electoral victory when controlling for electoral fraud and anti-government violence. This supports the hypothesis and suggests that incumbents do benefit, at least in the short term, from applying electoral violence. However, long-term backlash may still occur and the consequences for the society are dire. The relationship between anti-government violence and electoral outcome did not achieve statistical significance. Further research are needed to improve the nuance of the findings in this paper and better understand electoral violence from different actors’ perspectives.