Journal of Peace Research

2017, Vol. 54(3) 397411

Perils of pluralism: Electoral violence The Author(s) 2017
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DOI: 10.1177/0022343316687801
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Charles Fernandes Taylor

Department of Political Science, Denison University
Jon CW Pevehouse
Department of Political Science, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Scott Straus
Department of Political Science, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Abstract
Why do some multiparty elections lead to political violence while others do not? Despite extensive literatures on
democratization, civil war, and violence against civilians in civil war, the topic of electoral violence has received less
attention. We develop a set of theoretical propositions to explain this variation, testing them on an original dataset on
African elections from 1990 to 2008. We find that elections in which an incumbent presidential candidate is running
for re-election are significantly more likely to experience electoral violence, both prior to the election and after voting has
taken place. We argue that clientelism is behind this pattern, and that clients often resort to electoral violence to protect
a reliable incumbent patron. On the other hand, when an incumbent candidate is not running for office, we argue that
clients are less willing to assume the risks of participating in electoral violence because candidates in the election have not
established a record of delivering patronage at the executive level. We further find some evidence that pre-existing social
conflicts increase the risk of pre-election violence. We suggest that this finding is due to the tendency of political elites to
mobilize voters around pre-existing political and economic grievances to promote their candidacies, in turn heightening
tensions and divisions. We also examine, but find little support for, a number of other possible determinants of electoral
violence, such as regime type, income level, international observers, ongoing civil war, pathway to power, and first
elections after civil war. The article contributes not only to a small but growing literature on electoral violence but also to
a burgeoning literature on political behavior in African elections.

Keywords
Africa, clientelism, elections, electoral violence, patronage, political violence

Introduction Hafner-Burton, Hyde & Jablonski, 2014; Fjelde &

In the past two decades, the studies of democratization and
political violence, especially civil war, have been dominant
themes in comparative politics. However, despite
an important line of inquiry on whether regime character-
istics contribute to the onset of civil war (Carey, 2007;
Fearon & Laitin, 2003; Hegre et al., 2001; Saideman
et al., 2002; Snyder, 2000), the topic of electoral violence
has received less empirical and theoretical attention until
recently (Bekoe, 2012; Dunning, 2011; Daxecker, 2012;
Hoglund, 2016; Salehyan & Linebarger, 2015).1 Yet elec-
tions in multiparty systems, especially in states that recently
1
This despite some excellent case-specific studies, such as Boone
(2011); Boone & Kriger (2010); Klopp & Zuern (2007); Mueller
(2008).
Corresponding author:
sstraus@wisc.edu
398
transitioned to more competitive politics, often trigger
violence during electoral campaigns or after results are
announced. Such violence is often short of civil war
but nonetheless can claim many lives and can severely
undermine the legitimacy of electoral processes and
the governments formed in their aftermath. Electoral
violence is one of the perils of political pluralism, and
understanding its dynamics has important theoretical
and practical implications.
In this article, we focus specifically on electoral vio-
lence in sub-Saharan Africa. The region offers an
unusual opportunity to hold a number of factors con-
stant given a nearly region-wide transition from single-
party to multiparty rule starting in the early 1990s. The
African democratization process since the end of
the Cold War has been the subject of a number of
studies (Arriola, 2012; Bratton & van de Walle,
1997; Cheeseman, 2015; Diamond & Plattner, 2010;
Lindberg, 2006). While there is common recognition
that the cumulative record on Africas grand democratic
experiment is mixed (Carothers, 2006; Lynch & Craw-
ford, 2011; Reddy, 2008), the specific issue of electoral
violence has not been theorized or studied extensively,
especially using cross-national data (for exceptions see
Basedau, Erdmann & Mehler, 2007; Bekoe, 2012;
Collier, 2009; Scarritt, McMillan & Mozaffar, 2001;
Fjelde & Hoglund, 2016). Our study thus contributes
to the literature on democratization in sub-Saharan
Africa.
Our multivariate analysis finds that presidential
incumbency is a key determinant of Africas electoral
violence. The dominant institutional form of African
politics is clientelism, or what many in the Africanist
literature call neo-patrimonialism (Arriola, 2012). This
institutional form conditions the stakes of elections. In
the context of strong political clientelism, the personal
networks that develop around an incumbent are heavily
invested in the re-election of their patron. Those whose
access to resources depends on the person of the incum-
bent will resort to violence, often through the states
security forces or ruling partys militia, to guarantee pri-
vileged access to power and patronage. Among all the
factors we investigate, the only one that is robustly asso-
ciated with both pre- and post-vote violence is whether
an incumbent is seeking re-election.
We argue further that the logic of violence during the
period of electoral competition is different from the logic
of violence after results have been announced. Our sta-
tistical results and case analysis bear this out. In the pre-
election period, we find some evidence that pre-existing
social conflict correlates with violence. We suggest that
journal of PEACE RESEARCH 54(3)
political campaigns often gravitate to contentious issues
and may therefore exacerbate existing conflicts. After the
election, the dynamics are somewhat different. Other
than the presence of an incumbent candidate, none of
our variables consistently predict post-election violence.
Finally, we find that a number of plausible factors
linked to other types of political violence are not
clearly related to electoral violence. Regime type,
poorer countries, the presence of international observ-
ers, violent pathways to power, first elections after a
civil war, and elections during ongoing civil wars do
not make African countries in our dataset more vul-
nerable to electoral violence.
The article proceeds as follows: after developing our
theoretical argument, the next two sections describe the
dataset and report key descriptive findings. Thereafter,
we present the multivariate model, assessing its robust-
ness against the introduction of other variables tapping
alternative hypotheses. We conclude by discussing impli-
cations and avenues for further research.
Theoretical argument
Violence exists as one of several strategies available to
influence election outcomes in regimes where demo-
cratic institutions are new or relatively weak (Mares &
Young, 2016; Schedler, 2002). In the pre-election
period, violence can depress turnout among opposition
supporters or coerce voters into supporting the incum-
bent (Bekoe, 2012). Violence can also intimidate oppo-
sition parties into boycotting the election, effectively
ensuring an incumbent victory (Hafner-Burton, Hyde
& Jablonski, 2014). In the post-election period, govern-
ments may use violence to crack down on any opposition
protest against the result.
However, perpetrating electoral violence is not cost-
less (Van Ham & Lindberg, 2015). Governments that
use violence against their own citizens risk alienating
segments of the public. Opposition parties that engage
in violence call into question their own democratic cre-
dentials. Outcry against electoral violence inevitably
weakens the legitimacy of an election victory and dam-
ages the reputation of the government both at home and
abroad (Bekoe, 2012). For governments that depend
more on foreign aid, violence can lead to negative finan-
cial repercussions. Furthermore, perpetrators of violence
face the risk of future prosecution for their actions, either
by domestic or international tribunals. Thus, electoral
violence is not simply one of many tactics in nascent
multiparty regimes; committing violence is particularly
risky and costly.
Taylor et al.
In this article, we contribute to a new but growing
literature examining the causes of electoral violence from
a cross-national perspective. Among previous studies,
Hafner-Burton, Hyde & Jablonski (2014) argue that
incumbents resort to violence when they judge their
opponents popularity to be relatively high and when
they face few institutional constraints. Daxecker (2012)
argues that the presence of international election moni-
tors in African elections can increase the likelihood of
post-election violence when they draw attention to elec-
tion fraud. Fjelde & Hoglund (2016) suggest that major-
itarian electoral rules make election violence more likely.
In their sample of African countries, Salehyan & Line-
barger (2015) argue that competitive elections held in
illiberal systems are the most prone to violence.
In our statistical tests that follow, we control for these
alternative explanations and show that, while they may
help us explain violence, they do not attenuate our find-
ings concerning incumbency. We believe a complemen-
tary mechanism is at work, driving much of the cross-
national and over-time variation. Using new data to
assess these arguments, we show that political elites are
willing to use electoral violence when the power of a
reliable incumbent patron is at stake. We argue that
recourse to violence will be more common when an
individual incumbent is seeking re-election. We expect
that the mechanism is pronounced in personalized, cli-
entelistic, presidential systems that characterize most
African states. Our emphasis on the importance of
patronclient relationships is consistent with a wide
swath of scholarship on political behavior in Africas
multiparty regimes (Arriola, 2012; Bratton & van de
Walle, 1997; Lynch & Crawford, 2011). In these coun-
tries, incumbents will have cultivated a network of
clients who depend on the person of the incumbent to
secure their political or commercial advantages. These
advantages can include access to lucrative state rents,
rights to agricultural land and other valuable business
enterprises, and protection from prosecution for corrup-
tion or other illegal behavior. In close elections, incum-
bents will be more willing to call on a network of
interested elites to commit risky, violent behavior, and
those elites are more likely to accept the proposition,
because of a prior, mutually beneficial patrimonial rela-
tionship. As former Cote dIvoire President, Laurent
Gbagbo, allegedly told his inner circle in what became
a violent electoral period: If I fall, you do too (OTP,
2015: 21).
Some previous studies of election violence in Africa
also highlight the role of clientelism. Salehyan &
Linebarger (2015) suggest that neo-patrimonialism
399
weakens institutions in illiberal systems, making electoral
violence more likely. Fjelde & Hoglund (2016) argue
that the winner-take-all nature of majoritarian electoral
laws magnifies the effects of clientelistic systems by
excluding losers from any patronage, thus increasing the
likelihood of violence. Our own analysis focuses on the
importance of clientelism as it relates to incumbency.
Incumbents do not employ violence as an exclusive
strategy. Incumbents have many advantages to secure
victory. They may distribute patronage to secure elite
support, co-opt challengers, or buy votes. Incumbents
may manipulate the media or electoral institutions.
Empirically, incumbency advantage is pronounced in
Africa; when incumbents run, their parties perform sig-
nificantly better than in the alternative (Cheeseman,
2015: 182). However, there will be elections when
incumbents and their elite clients fear that the nonvio-
lent tools at their disposal cannot guarantee victory. We
argue that, in those circumstances, incumbents and the
elites around them are more likely to turn to electoral
violence as a strategy to retain power.
By contrast, when an incumbent candidate is not
running for office, the maintenance of existing patronage
networks is more uncertain, as no candidate in the elec-
tion has a record of rewarding loyal clients (Cheeseman,
2010). While such elections are likely to be closer,
thereby raising the propensity for violence, non-
incumbent electoral candidates are less likely to have
enough confidence in members of the ruling party or
security forces to call on them to commit violence. Simi-
larly, those members of the ruling party or security forces
who might otherwise be willing to perpetrate violence to
protect an incumbent may not be confident of any future
patronage rewards. Even if a president has handpicked a
successor, or a candidate comes from the same party as
an incumbent, the relationship between candidate and
the would-be violent actors will involve greater uncer-
tainty. The new candidate will likely have his or her own
preferences for which regime insiders stand to benefit
from the new government, and members of the existing
regime will exercise caution until the new presidents
preferences for patronage distribution are revealed. In
these circumstances, the would-be violent actors are less
willing to incur the risks associated with committing
violence. This mechanism should operate in both pre-
vote and post-vote settings, as entrenched elites should
be willing to promote electoral violence both to influence
voters and to quell any post-election protests challenging
the result.
Several countries in the study fit this general pattern.
For example, electoral violence has occurred in
400
Equatorial Guinea in all six elections in the dataset. All of
these have featured the incumbent President Teodoro
Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, who came to power in
1979 and now stands as the longest serving head of state
in Africa. Obiangs government has enjoyed windfall oil
revenues since the mid-1990s, enriching a political elite
largely made up of members of the presidents Esangui
clan (Wood, 2004). Several opposition parties have been
co-opted into the governments patronage network
through access to oil money and other state rents. How-
ever, the president also faces determined opposition, and
those actors are regularly victims of state violence. We
argue that the president is able to call upon key actors,
and those actors are willing to commit violence, because
of an existing established and lucrative patronage net-
work built around the person of the president.
Elections in Zimbabwe are also regularly violent,
especially after the ruling Zimbabwe African National
Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) under Robert
Mugabe began to encounter more formidable opposition
from the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).
Elections in 2000, 2002, 2005, and 2008 all witnessed
high levels of electoral violence, with members of the
security services and pro-government militias beating,
killing, and torturing members of the opposition and
their suspected supporters. ZANU-PFs ability to dis-
pense patronage is critical in maintaining its hold on
power and motivating the perpetrators of election vio-
lence. However, unlike Obiang in Equatorial Guinea,
Mugabe does not enjoy the ability to distribute oil rents.
Instead, the Zimbabwean government manipulated
access to commercial farming plots. Access to land has
been a major source of tension in Zimbabwe since the
end of white rule in 1980 (HRW, 2008). With a falter-
ing economy and strengthening opposition, the govern-
ment encouraged peasants, unemployed youth, and
ruling party supporters to invade white-owned farms
while refusing to compensate white farmers for the land
that had been seized. In addition to encouraging the
forcible seizures, the government adopted a more radical
official land resettlement scheme, acquiring and reallo-
cating 6.4 million hectares of farmland between 2000
and 2002 (Boone & Kriger, 2010: 183). The main ben-
eficiaries were the ruling elites, party officials, cabinet
ministers, other senior officials, soldiers, and military
brass (Boone & Kriger, 2010: 183). We suspect that
proponents of Zimbabwes electoral violence had a direct
stake in maintaining Mugabe as president.
The counterfactual of these cases is that had an
incumbent not sought re-election, electoral violence
would have been less likely. Non-incumbent
journal of PEACE RESEARCH 54(3)
candidates would have been less willing to call on key
actors to commit violence, and the previous benefici-
aries of government patronage would have been less
willing to assume the costs of committing violence if
they were unsure of continued access to largesse under
a new patron.
Kenya also illustrates our causal story. Since Kenya
reintroduced multiparty elections in 1992, the country
has held five presidential votes. Three of those were quite
violent in 1992, 1997, and 2007. Elections in 2002
and 2013 were not or at least less so.2 Our theory gives
insight into one reason for this: in the violent electoral
years, incumbents were seeking re-election, while in the
nonviolent and less violent years they were not.
Elections in 1992 and 1997 were cases in which estab-
lished elites within the ruling party promoted electoral
violence against supporters of the opposition to ensure
the re-election of Daniel Arap Moi, the longtime incum-
bent. After assuming power in 1978, Moi ran a highly
personalized, patronage-based government that
rewarded loyal elites with access to a variety of lucrative
commercial enterprises (Branch, 2011). The return of
multiparty politics in the early 1990s was met with stiff
resistance from regime loyalists, who helped ensure
Mois re-election in 1992 and 1997 by mobilizing gov-
ernment supporters to violently remove opposition sup-
porters from critical pro-government constituencies
(Kamungi, 2009).
In 2002, having reached the end of his term limit,
Moi picked political newcomer Uhuru Kenyatta as his
successor to run against opposition candidate Mwai
Kibaki. As the son of independence leader Jomo Kenya-
tta, Uhuru Kenyatta was heir to one of the largest for-
tunes in Kenya. However, Mois political clients were
divided over whether to support Kenyatta, whose prefer-
ences for distributing future patronage among compet-
ing interests were unclear (Cheeseman, 2010).
Ultimately, many of Mois long-time allies refused to
support Kenyatta. Kibaki emerged victorious in an elec-
tion that was characterized by much less violence than
elections in 1992 or 1997.3
2
The 2013 election is not in the dataset, but the lack of both an
incumbent candidate and major violence match the theorys
predictions.
3
The 2002 election was also unusual in that both presidential
candidates were from the same ethnic group (Kikuyu), and thus
some of the ethnic dynamics of other presidential contests were not
present. While this may have contributed somewhat to the lack of
electoral violence (as suggested by two anonymous reviewers), we
argue that the role of incumbency was more important. Although
Taylor et al.
The election in 2007 witnessed relatively low pre-
election violence, but post-election violence was severe,
with more than 1,000 reported deaths (CIPEV, 2008).
The fierce debates surrounding the integrity of the
announced result saw both the incumbent Kibaki and
the challenger, Raila Odinga, claim victory. As Kibaki
was declared the winner by the electoral commission,
supporters of Odinga began protests in Nairobi as well
as violent expulsions of Kibaki supporters from opposi-
tion strongholds. This in turn triggered a violent crack-
down by government security forces as well as the
mobilization of pro-government militants by regime
supporters, who included politicians and businessmen
utilizing criminal gangs to conduct retaliatory attacks
against alleged supporters of the opposition (CIPEV,
2008: 347).
Thus, while Odinga supporters initiated post-election
protest, our theory holds that, when faced with the pros-
pect of defeat, Kibaki felt confident enough in his clients,
and his clients were willing, to commit violence because
of the existence of an established patronage relationship.
Had there been no incumbent candidate, the post-
election violence would not have materialized or been
less severe, we suggest. Political elites, unsure of any
future rewards, would not have been willing to incur the
costs associated with mobilizing the security services and
pro-government militias to uphold a potentially fraudu-
lent result. Moreover, the non-incumbent would not
have had enough confidence in the loyalty of the security
forces to effectively ask them to murder civilians.
Our theory does not explain every circumstance. Some-
times electoral violence occurs when incumbents do not
seek re-election, and sometimes violence does not occur
when incumbents seek office for another term. In addi-
tion, we do not mean to suggest that party incumbency is
insignificant; even if the person of an incumbent is not
running, those politicians from the ruling party enjoy
significant advantages in the election. But sometimes
party or personal incumbency is not enough
to guarantee victory. For understanding when such
Uhuru Kenyatta is a Kikuyu, relatively few Kikuyus supported his
candidacy in 2002, and he drew his support largely from Mois ethnic
following of traditionally pastoralist ethnic groups in the Rift Valley
and North Eastern Provinces (Steeves, 2006). Since these Moi
loyalists were responsible for much of the violence in 1992 and
1997 electoral contests, we ought to expect that they would
perform the same role for Kenyatta in 2002. This suggests to us
that the lack of violence was because Kenyatta was perceived to be
a largely untested patron rather than because the two candidates were
competing for Kikuyu votes.
401
circumstances turn violent, our claim is that incumbents
and their supporters are more willing to accept the risks
associated with committing violence when an established,
personalistic patronage network is already in place.
The African Electoral Violence Database
(AEVD)
For our cross-national analysis, we use a unique dataset
on electoral violence in Africa that covers the period from
1990 to 2008, entitled the African Electoral Violence
Database (AEVD).4 To the best of our knowledge, there
is no other published database that specifically codes for
electoral violence with the level of detail in the AEVD.
One limitation of existing studies is an inconsistent def-
inition of electoral violence. In one study, for example,
violence includes civil wars, riots, political strikes, and
assassinations (Collier, 2009). In Batess (2008: 147)
analysis of state failure in Africa, the dependent variable
for violence is the formation of militias. Lindbergs
(2006) database on democratization in sub-Saharan
Africa is similar to ours. Lindberg codes (among many
other factors) for whether an election was peaceful,
whether there were isolated incidents of violence, or
whether there was a campaign of violence. While we
build on Lindbergs important work, his primary pur-
pose is not to explore the dynamics of electoral violence,
and we seek to improve on it by creating further distinc-
tions in the dependent variable.
Other datasets that assess election violence on a cross-
national basis include the National Elections across
Democracy and Autocracy (NELDA) dataset (Hyde &
Marinov, 2012) and the Social Conflict Analysis Database
(SCAD) (Salehyan et al., 2012). In its worldwide coverage
of elections, NELDA codes a variety of newspaper, news
wire, and academic sources for whether there was any
government harassment of the opposition before the vote
(Nelda15), whether there was any significant violence
relating to the elections that resulted in civilian deaths
(Nelda33), and whether there were election-related riots
after the vote (Nelda29). While the NELDA data are
excellent for some purposes, our own AEVD data focus
specifically on electoral violence in Africa, and as discussed
below, offer a somewhat finer measurement of violence
before and after the vote than does NELDA.5
4
A more detailed description of the data is available in Straus &
Taylor (2012).
5
Similarly, Kelley (2012) develops a dataset on the quality of
elections that includes the presence of violence; however, she
measures only pre-electoral violence.
402
The SCAD data measure a variety of types of violent,
non-war related social conflict in Africa using LexisNexis
keyword searches of the Associated Press (AP) and the
Agence-France Presse (AFP) news wires. One dimension
on which events are coded is whether elections are men-
tioned as a source of the violence in the media descrip-
tions. While the dataset is very valuable (and we make
use of it below in our own models), international news
wire coverage of Africa and electoral violence in Africa is
uneven, giving a potentially biased selection of recorded
events. The same is largely true for nongovernmental
organization reporting and election observation reports.
In choosing a data source to code cases cross-
nationally, we sought a single source that is reliable and
that has comprehensive coverage across African states.
We wanted to avoid any systematic reporting bias by
selecting a single source that would report on as many
cases in the sample as possible. The main source on
which we rely is therefore the US Department of State
annual Human Rights reports (various years).6 The
information in these reports is compiled from several
sources, including media outlets, academic and congres-
sional reports, nongovernmental organization reports,
and observations from embassy staff. This use of several
sources gives the reports a reasonably accurate descrip-
tion of the conduct of elections held in a particular year,
including details of election-related violence. In addition,
the US State Department reports on all countries in
Africa, making the unevenness problem inherent in
media accounts less of a problem. We consulted every
report for a country with an election between 1990 and
2008. For the years 199092, we found the reports to be
somewhat less detailed on election violence. We there-
fore further examined the Amnesty International (vari-
ous years) and Human Rights Watch (various years)
annual human rights reports as well as journalism cov-
erage in Africa Report (199092) for those years.7
In identifying cases of electoral violence in the reports,
the AEVD defines electoral violence as physical violence
and coercive intimidation directly tied to an impending
electoral contest or to an announced electoral result.8 One
6
Available at http://www.state.gov/j/drl/rls/hrrpt.
7
We considered using local news media sources from the countries
in the sample as an alternative source of data. However, newspapers in
much of Africa are either controlled by the state or highly partisan in
their coverage. They are therefore unlikely to report electoral violence
in an unbiased fashion.
8 13
By announced result, we refer mostly to the announcement of
electoral returns, rigged or not, which in turn triggers a chain of
events that lead to violence. By announced result, however, we
journal of PEACE RESEARCH 54(3)
problem with this seemingly straightforward definition is
that it can be difficult to know whether violence is directly
related to an election. While in most cases we were able to
determine whether violence was directly related to an elec-
toral contest, for ambiguous cases, we consider any politi-
cally related violence that occurred six months prior to an
election or three months after an election to be electoral
violence.9 We accept the possibility that this time frame
will exclude some violence that other studies consider to be
electoral violence. For example, Fjelde & Hoglund (2016)
use the SCAD data to construct a dichotomous measure of
whether a particular month recorded violence, with elec-
tions mentioned as a potential source of the violence,
regardless of whether or not there was an impending or
recent election.10 We opt for a narrower time frame to
ensure that we are distinguishing between violence directly
due to electoral politics and broader political violence.
We further disaggregate violence along three dimen-
sions. First, we code who committed the violence
incumbents (referring to any state agent, militia, political
party member, or hooligan who acts on behalf of the
political party that controls the executive) or challengers
(which refers to any party member, militia, or hooligan
acting on behalf of the political party that does not control
the executive). The categories are not mutually exclusive
in some election cases, incumbents and challengers both
commit violence in an election. Second, we code for
whether violence occurred before or after elections are held.
Third, we code for level of violence using four categories:
0 no reported violence; 1 violent harassment;11
2 violent repression;12 and 3 generalized violence.13
also include the possibility that an election was annulled, leading in
turn to violence.
9
We choose a longer time horizon prior to an election date to reflect
the fact that electoral campaigns usually take place for a substantial
period before an election. We choose a shorter period after an election
to reflect that responses to an electoral result will usually occur within
a few months of an announced result.
10
The SCAD data code for first, second, and third sources of the
political violence it records. Fjelde & Hoglund (2016: 307) consider
violence to be electoral violence if elections are coded in any of these
positions as sources of the violence.
11
Indicated as police or security forces breaking up rallies, party
supporters fighting, street brawls, opposition newspapers being
confiscated with violence, candidate disqualifications, and limited
short-term arrests of political opponents.
12
Indicated by high-level assassinations and targeted murder,
combined with long-term high-level arrests of party leaders, the
consistent use of violent harassment or torture.
Indicated by repeated, widespread physical attacks leading to a
substantial number of deaths over time, which we measure as 20 or
more deaths.
Taylor et al.
We believe that using an ordinal scale gives us some
advantages over studies that rely on a dichotomous
measure of electoral violence. For example, our mea-
sure considers post-election violence resulting in 20
deaths to be much more severe than post-election vio-
lence resulting in one death. The NELDA dataset
codes such cases identically.
The data are not flawless and, as with all data sources,
are subject to the inherent possibility of noise and bias.
However, considering the problem of noise, the US State
Department reports provide a level of detail sufficient to
code elections into the variables outlined above.14 An
Online appendix has several examples of how the AEVD
was coded from the State Department reports. For cases
where the State Department reports are ambiguous, we
consulted election observer reports and those by Human
Rights Watch, where available. In addition, we also con-
tacted country experts for clarification on any lingering
coding issues.
In addition, while many countries hold parliamentary
and presidential elections at different points in time, in
practice, many elections are held in close temporal prox-
imity and distinguishing whether any violence relates to
the presidential and parliamentary elections can be dif-
ficult. Thus, if parliamentary and presidential elections
are held within three months of each other, even if in
different years, we code the case as a single electoral case.
This leaves us with 221 election cases in the dataset
between the years 1990 and 2008.
In terms of bias, one could be concerned that because
of the reliance on the State Department reports, we
might overestimate the level of violence committed by
the opposition. Given US diplomatic ties with incum-
bent governments, there could be incentives for the State
Department to downplay violence perpetrated by gov-
ernments that support US interests. However, as dis-
cussed below, our findings show that incumbent
parties are the main perpetrators of electoral violence,
including countries that are considered allies of the
United States. We also were careful to cross-check the
data against other sources and country experts this
check revealed no cases in our data where we found
14
We note too that the data source is also used in other prominent
datasets on violence, notably the Political Terror Scale and the
Cingranelli and Richards Human Rights Data Project (see
Cingranelli & Richards, 2010; Wood & Gibney, 2010). Both of
these data collection projects also consult Amnesty International
annual reports. In some ambiguous cases, we also consulted
Amnesty reports; however, we generally found the State
Department and Amnesty reports to be highly correlated.
403
reports of systematic violence by state-related parties that
were misattributed. We are thus confident that our attri-
bution of violence is not systematically biased.
Patterns of electoral violence
Using this new dataset, we find that the most serious
incidents of widespread, generalized electoral violence
are about 10% (N 23) of all elections held in sub-
Saharan African between 1990 and 2008. We find nearly
the same proportion of elections that involved repressive
violence that entailed targeted assassinations and long-
term high-level detentions combined with occasional
cases of torture: also 10% (N 22) of elections. By
contrast, violent harassment occurred in about 38%
(N 84) of cases. There is no reported electoral violence
in 42% (N 92) of cases. These descriptive results stand
in contrast to claims that democratization routinely insti-
gates major violence in poorer, weakly institutionalized
countries (Collier, 2009; Snyder, 2000). Rather, the
findings suggest there is considerable variation among
African electoral campaigns.
The dataset indicates longitudinal consistency. The
mean level of violence in the dataset is around .89 (on
a 03 scale), and 12 of the 18 years in the dataset show
an average violence level between .5 and 1. There are two
years in the early 1990s (1992 and 1993) when African
states were holding first elections after transitioning from
one-party regimes and when there was a concentration of
highly violent electoral periods. But, the years 2000 and
2005 were as or more violent, on average, as 1992 and
1993 were. The result runs contrary to Lindberg (2006),
who finds that multiparty elections improve over time,
which would imply decreasing levels of violence.
In terms of timing, violence primarily occurs before
election day. Of the 129 cases with some electoral vio-
lence, 122 cases (94.6%) took place during the electoral
campaign before the polling date while 38 cases (29.5%)
had violence after the voting. Only seven cases had any
form of post-vote electoral violence and no pre-vote elec-
toral violence. In terms of the authors of the violence,
our data show that incumbent actors are the dominant
perpetrators of electoral violence before and after the
election. If challengers are involved in violence, it is
marginally more likely to be after the election. In pre-
vote violence, incumbents were involved 98% of the
time, and they were the unique perpetrators nearly
80% of the time. In post-vote violence, incumbents were
involved 92% of the time, and they were the unique
perpetrators 74% of the time. By contrast, challengers
were involved in 20% of the pre-vote cases and 32% of
404
the post-vote cases. The percentages are similar if only
high violence cases are examined.15
Cross-national model
We now investigate our hypothesis concerning incum-
bency using multivariate analysis. In these models, we
use the four-category AEVD coding of pre- and post-
election violence as the dependent variable. Because the
values of violence are ordered from less to more severe,
we use ordered logit estimation. As a robustness check,
given possible measurement error, we also collapse the
violent elections into one category. The result is a binary
variable of no violence and any violence.
We evaluate our theory of incumbency by coding
whether or not an incumbent executive is running in
each election. The variable (Incumbent running) takes
on a value of 1 if an incumbent leader is standing in the
election and 0 otherwise. The sample in these models
includes all presidential elections as well as parliamentary
elections in parliamentary electoral systems. In both of
these types of elections the office of the executive is at
stake and the proposed mechanism should apply in both
situations. This excludes parliamentary elections held in
presidential systems from the sample. As a robustness
check, we also re-estimate our baseline model excluding
parliamentary systems from our measure of incumbency.
Control variables
To control for potential threats to inference, we include
per-capita gross domestic product as a control variable. A
large literature on the causes of civil war links the onset of
civil war to low levels of per capita income (Fearon &
Laitin, 2003; Blattman & Miguel, 2010). The hypothe-
sized mechanisms vary from low state capacity to repress
rebellion, to lower opportunity costs for would-be rebels,
to increased frustration due to poor living conditions.
We are particularly concerned with the third mechan-
ism, absolute poverty or declining economic conditions,
which could yield greater frustration and a greater will-
ingness to engage in violence in order to contest elections
or announced results. Higher levels of income should
decrease the chances of a slide from democracy back to
authoritarianism (Przeworski et al., 2000), influencing
other independent variables such as durability and
democraticness. For these reasons, we include Per capita
GDP measured in year t1.
15
High violence refers to categories 2 and 3 of the ordered violence
measure.
journal of PEACE RESEARCH 54(3)
To control for the possible confounding effect of
regime type on electoral violence, we specify an indi-
cator variable for whether the regime is democratic or
not. We use Cheibub, Gandhi & Vreelands (2010)
data on regime type to define an indicator variable,
Democracy, measured at t1. These variables should
control for any tendency for less democratic countries
to be more prone to violence during elections (Saleh-
yan & Linebarger, 2015).
As additional controls for the effects of regime type,
we include an indicator variable measuring whether a
regime transition took place prior to an election. This
should allow us to determine if the institutional uncer-
tainty in recently transitioned states increases the like-
lihood of violence. We rely on Cheibub, Gandhi &
Vreelands (2010) coding of democratic and autocratic
transitions. Our variables, Democratization and Autocra-
tization, measure changes in regime type over a five-year
period. If Cheibub and colleagues code as experiencing a
democratic or autocratic transition over a five-year
period preceding the election (that is, changes in regime
type from t6 to t1 before the election), the respective
variable is coded as a 1.
Next, we introduce Path to power, which is coded 1 if
the incumbent running in the election came to power
through violent means, such as a coup or civil war (Goe-
mans, Gleditsch & Chiozza, 2009). If the incumbent
took a peaceful pathway to power (or there is no incum-
bent running), the variable is coded as 0. We also include
a variable (Previous election violence) that counts the
number of years since previous electoral violence to con-
trol for any temporal dependence in the model.16
Large-scale violence in the form of a civil war could
influence the prospects for peaceful elections. At the
same time, it is not clear in which direction civil war
might influence electoral violence. As Dunning (2011)
argues, civil war fighting and electoral violence could be
strategic substitutes or strategic complements. To this
end, we rely on UCDP-PRIO data (Pettersson & Wal-
lensteen, 2015) to code an indicator variable, Civil war,
if the state under observation is experiencing a civil war
in year t. In the same vein, we include an indicator
variable (Post war) for whether the election being held
is the first after a civil war termination. Again, the direc-
tion of how a recently ended civil war shapes electoral
violence is unclear. It might be that after wars end there
16
This would be the equivalent of the base of a natural cubic spline
function as suggested by Beck, Katz & Tucker (1998). If the
observation is the first election, this variable is coded as 0.
Taylor et al.
Preelection violence
Incumbent
Incumbent (alt)
Per capita gdp
Path to power
Post war
Civil war
Previous violence
Democracy
Autocratization
Democratization
Social conflict
5 0
Ord. logit Ord. logit Ord. logit (SCAD)
Figure 1. Plots of coefficient estimates of determinants of pre-
election violence
are weapons in circulation and tensions between previ-
ously fighting factions remain high, thereby increasing
the prospects of electoral violence. Alternatively, it could
also be that political elites and citizens are exhausted
from wars and want to avoid violence.17
Results and discussion
Figure 1 graphically presents the coefficient estimates of
our statistical models for the pre-election period. The
figure presents five sets of estimates: three using ordered
logit, one using logit, and one using conditional logit.
Each set of estimates strongly supports our proposed
theory on the importance of incumbency. Table I con-
tains regression results for our main models.18 The vari-
able is consistently statistically significant regardless of
whether we adopt a more restrictive definition of incum-
bency or not (the latter estimates represented by the
larger, gray circles in Figure 1).
This finding is not only statistically significant but
also, as shown in Figure 2, substantively important. The
increase in the predicted probability of pre-electoral vio-
lence (based on the logit estimates) is over 20% when an
incumbent is running for office. Figure 2 shows the
changes in probability of pre-election violence when
moving from a case where no incumbent is running to
17
Salehyan & Linebarger (2015) do not find any consistent
relationship between ongoing or recently concluded civil wars and
electoral violence, but we include both as control variables given the
arguments by Dunning (2011) and the use of civil war control
variables by Hafner-Burton, Hyde & Jablonski (2014) and Fjelde
& Hoglund (2016).
18
The Online appendix contains all full regression tables.
405
a case where an incumbent is running. The final plot in
each graph shows the change in probability when using
the (logit) estimation from our binary outcome variable.
Turning to the third set of coefficient plots (the small
squares), we add an additional control for pre-existing
social conflict. We use the Social Conflict in Africa Data-
base (SCAD) to measure this conflict. We create a vari-
able of the log of the average duration of social conflict
events in countries in previous non-election years, mea-
sured in days (Salehyan et al., 2012).19 This should allow
us to control for any effects of ongoing social violence
5 10 that is not measured by the Civil war variable. We note
Logit Cond. logit that this new variable achieves statistical significance and
takes on the expected sign more social conflict increases
the propensity for pre-election violence. The variable
captures the presence of significant social conflicts that
are not directly related to elections. This covers a variety
of conflicts, including conflicts over natural resources,
protests against authoritarian regimes, and ongoing eth-
nic and religious conflicts. In many cases, politicians use
these grievances during campaigns to promote their own
candidacies. When these conflicts become instrumenta-
lized during elections, or when politicians recruit com-
batants for their own purposes, the risk of electoral
violence may increase.
The next set of estimates (represented by crosses in
Figure 1) collapses our dependent variable into two cate-
gories and thus uses logistic regression to estimate our
model. As seen in the figure, these results are highly
consistent with our previous estimates. Finally, in our
most conservative test, the final set of estimates uses
country fixed-effects, which allows us to model within-
country variation. This model (dark circles in Figure 1)
yields the strongest evidence to date that incumbency
leads to the increased risk of pre-election violence, even
when excluding those states that experience no variation
in violence. In sum, there is strong and robust evidence
that the presence of an incumbent is correlated with pre-
election violence.
A number of variables that plausibly could affect the
chances of pre-electoral violence generally do not achieve
statistical significance. These include regime type, the
pathway to power of the incumbent, whether a civil war
is ongoing, and whether the elections were the first held
after a civil war. Our findings on the lack of a relation-
ship between civil war and electoral violence match those
19
We exclude conflicts related to elections, meaning those conflicts
that were coded in the SCAD as caused by either elections or
democracy/human rights.
406 journal of PEACE RESEARCH 54(3)

Table I. Estimates of correlates of pre- and post-electoral violence

(Ordered logit) (Logit) (Ordered logit) (Logit)

Pre-election Pre-election Post-election Post-election

violence violence violence violence

Incumbent running 0.612* 0.876* 1.207** 1.269**

(0.261) (0.384) (0.412) (0.491)
Per capita GDP 0.315 0.388 0.367 0.248
(0.223) (0.296) (0.212) (0.243)
Path to power 0.069 0.280 0.503 0.696
(0.405) (0.536) (0.316) (0.370)
Post war 0.312 0.497 0.766 1.162
(0.411) (0.615) (0.697) (0.774)
Civil war 0.232 0.365 0.509 0.885
(0.362) (0.560) (0.665) (0.670)
Previous violence 0.235** 0.157** 0.106* 0.088
(0.052) (0.057) (0.053) (0.058)
Democracy 0.624 0.649 0.231 0.073
(0.519) (0.656) (0.620) (0.639)
Autocratization 0.152 0.232 0.250 0.323*
(0.175) (0.172) (0.190) (0.140)
Democratization 0.022 0.028 0.151 0.221
(0.197) (0.176) (0.182) (0.118)
Social conflict 0.258* 0.167
(0.107) (0.094)
Pre-election violence 1.226* 0.913
(0.614) (0.599)
Constant cut1 3.111 0.414
(1.759) (1.822)
Constant cut2 0.842 0.690
(1.680) (1.896)
Constant cut3 0.209 1.113
(1.739) (1.906)
Constant 3.011 0.552
(2.394) (2.109)

Observations 220 179 220 179

Robust standard errors, clustered on country, in parentheses. **p < 0.01, *p < 0.05.

of Salehyan & Linebarger (2015) who also find that
elections held during or immediately after civil wars are
not more prone to violence. Interestingly, in the fixed-
effects model, Civil war is negatively correlated with
electoral violence and achieves statistical significance.
The same is true of Post war. These two findings suggest
that, when examining only within-country variation over
time, the prior presence of large-scale violence reduces
the propensity of electoral violence. One factor previ-
ously associated with violence that drops out of the
fixed-effects specification is Social conflict, which now
fails to achieve statistical significance. This indicates that
while higher levels of pre-existing conflicts may be
correlated with pre-election violence when comparing
countries to one another, variation in social conflict over
time, within the same country, has little bearing on the
prospects for violence.
Turning to other control variables, poorer (or richer)
countries do not have more electoral violence, whether
before or after a vote. That result is surprising. Given the
literature on the onset of civil war, the expectation would
be that it would be easier to recruit thugs in poorer
countries or that institutions would be weaker, leading
to less confidence in them. But neither is the case, and
indeed the most recent worst bouts of electoral violence
in sub-Saharan Africa took place in the comparatively
Taylor et al. 407

Conditional marginal effects of incumbent running with 95% CIs

.4 Conditional marginal effects of incumbent running with 95% CIs

.2
Effects on postelection violence
Effects on preelection violence
.2

.1
0

.1 0
.2

.2
.4

No violence Low violence Moderate violence High violence Logit No violence Low violence Moderate violence High violence Logit

Figure 2. Marginal effect plots of incumbency on pre-election Figure 4. Marginal effect plots of incumbency on post-election
violence violence

Like the pre-election violence results, the effects of

Incumbent
Incumbent (alt)
Per capita gdp
Path to power
Post war
Civil war
Previous violence
Preelection violence
Democracy
Autocratization
Democratization
Social conflict
10
Ord. logit
Figure 3. Plots of coefficient estimates of determinants of post-
election violence
wealthy countries of Kenya, Zimbabwe, and Cote
dIvoire. This finding, as well as the findings on first
elections after civil wars and ongoing civil wars, strongly
suggests that the causal dynamics of civil war are different
from the causal dynamics of electoral violence.
Turning to the estimates for post-election violence,
we again find significant evidence that incumbency
increases the propensity for this type of violence. As
shown in the coefficient plot in Figure 3, our measure
of incumbency is positively related to the presence of
post-election violence. The one case where incumbencys
effect is attenuated is in the estimates using the alterna-
tive measure of incumbency. While the variable is still
positively related to electoral violence, the estimate
misses statistical significance at the p < .05 level, but still
maintains significance at the p < .10 level (see Figure 4).
Postelection violence
5 0
Ord. logit Ord. logit (SCAD)
incumbency are substantively important, with the pres-
ence of an incumbent increasing the probability of post-
electoral violence by nearly 15%. We also note that the
incumbency effect is strong when moving to a fixed-
effects specification. Isolating within-country changes
over time yields similar findings, that incumbency is
related to post-election violence.
Also like the pre-election results, few other covariates
are consistently statistically significant across all specifi-
cations. The measure of the length of time since the
5 previous post-election violence appears to be negatively
Logit Cond. logit correlated with current post-election violence, but this
estimate is only statistically significant when not control-
ling for previous social conflict using the SCAD data.
The variable Social conflict is initially not related to
post-election violence until we move to the fixed-effects
specification. Ironically, this is the reversed pattern from
the pre-election violence results. The remaining covariate
which appears to be moderately correlated with post-
election violence is our measure of Autocratization. This
finding emerges after adding our Social conflict measure
and holds up in the more conservative fixed-effects spe-
cification. Thus, recent moves away from more demo-
cratic rule appear to have an attenuating effect on the
propensity for post-electoral violence.
Although our models do not reveal any consistently
strong predictors of post-election violence other than
incumbency, cases in the dataset suggest that violence
becomes more likely when well-organized opposition
parties have reason to believe that they are victims of
electoral fraud. We suspect this will be the case when
confidence in electoral management bodies is low. An
illustrative example of this dynamic is the 1992
408
presidential elections in Mauritania. After introducing
democratic reforms in 1991 with a new constitution, the
country held presidential elections in 1992. While the
voting proceeded relatively peacefully, state officials in
charge of overseeing the election ensured a victory for
incumbent candidate Maaouya Ould Sid Ahmed Taya
by prohibiting opposition supporters from registering to
vote, refusing to recognize ID cards from opposition
supporters, and using fraudulent voter rolls (HRW/A,
1994). After Ould Taya was declared the winner, oppo-
sition parties protested the result as fraudulent and wide-
spread riots ensued. Government security forces then
initiated a violent crackdown (Wiseman, 1992). While
our statistical models do not capture this dynamic, sev-
eral cases of post-election violence have a similar pattern.
Alternative explanations
Recent studies on electoral violence have highlighted
other explanations that could compete with our own
findings on the importance of incumbency and fragile
political institutions. For example, Daxecker (2012) sug-
gests that the presence of international election observers
may make electoral violence more likely by providing
credibility to opposition claims that an election result
may be fraudulent. To control for the possibility that
election observation missions may explain some of our
findings, we code an indicator variable indicating the
presence of electoral observers from the NELDA dataset
and add it to our original models (estimates can be found
in our Online appendix). The variable does not achieve
statistical significance, nor does it substantially alter the
previous estimates.
We also introduce two variables from the NELDA
data to control for the competitiveness of the election
based on the findings of Hafner-Burton, Hyde &
Jablonski (2014). In no cases are these new variables
statistically significant predictors of pre-election or
post-election violence in our model, yet our key variables
remain statistically significant. We suspect that electoral
competitiveness is key to triggering the dynamics of vio-
lence; actors are likely to incur the risks and costs asso-
ciated with violence only if the electoral outcome is
uncertain. But in our sample, competitiveness does not
drive violence.
Next, we control for the potential effects of different
electoral laws, given that Fjelde & Hoglund (2016) argue
that majoritarian and plurality systems are more prone to
electoral violence. Following the authors, we include indi-
cator variables for majoritarian/plurality systems and
mixed-member systems, with proportional representation
journal of PEACE RESEARCH 54(3)
serving as the reference category. The variables are not
significant and do not change the statistical significance
of our own key variables.
Finally, we address the potential issue of endogeneity.
If violence is used to help incumbents retain office, then
violence in the current election could lead to an incum-
bent retaining power, making it more likely that an
incumbent will run in the future. Interestingly, from a
statistical standpoint, we do not find this to be a prob-
lem. As shown in our Online appendix, we regress our
measure of whether an incumbent is standing for
re-election on a variable measuring whether there was
pre-election violence in the previous election. We then
repeat this model with a measure for post-election vio-
lence in the previous election, and a third time including
both measures of previous electoral violence. In no case
does the measure of electoral violence help us predict
whether an incumbent is running.20 Thus, while incum-
bents do appear to resort to violence in an attempt to
maintain office, these auxiliary regressions suggest they
are not always successful in doing so. And while it is
difficult to completely rule out endogeneity in any obser-
vational study, these findings suggest it is not a signifi-
cant contributor to our previous findings.
Conclusion
Understanding the sources of electoral violence is cen-
trally important for policymakers who often invest
heavily in democratic processes in developing coun-
tries. Given the scholarly attention to democratization
and political violence, the topic of electoral violence
also has significant theoretical stakes. In this article,
we take a step toward generating insights about the
patterns and dynamics of electoral violence. The analysis
is based on a region-specific sample, but there are more
global implications.
First, our results show that the presence of an incum-
bent executive candidate significantly increases the like-
lihood of electoral violence. We argue that in the context
of neo-patrimonial systems, political elites access to
patronage goods is threatened with a potential victory
for an opposition candidate. They are therefore willing
to mobilize supporters to participate in violence to pro-
tect an incumbent patron.
Second, our study suggests that pre-vote and post-
vote electoral violence have somewhat distinct dynamics.
20
The same results hold adding the controls from our previous
models in as covariates as well as substituting our more restrictive
definition of incumbency.
Taylor et al.
In pre-vote contexts, politicians instrumentalize salient
electorate concerns. Where there is pre-existing social
conflict, candidates may face strong incentives to cham-
pion the causes of particular factions, thus increasing the
likelihood of electoral violence. By contrast, in post-vote
environments, the issue at stake is often the legitimacy of
the election itself. A common post-vote scenario is that
incumbents rig, or are perceived to have rigged, results,
followed by protests and violence.
These findings may or may not travel to other regions.
We argue that incumbency matters in particular in per-
sonalized, clientelistic, presidential systems, but in other
systems where different informal rules dominate,
whether the incumbent runs for re-election may not
matter. We also find that where pre-existing social con-
flict exists electoral violence is more likely. That finding
should travel to other regions, but the presence of cross-
cutting cleavages or strong political parties may decrease
the likelihood that politicians instrumentalize particular
grievances. The idea that confidence in electoral institu-
tions matters should extend to other regions. Electoral
management bodies are critical to dispute resolution, and
whether opposing parties accept the setup and legitimacy
of these institutions should be important globally, espe-
cially for post-vote violence. That should be a subject for
future research.
The relationships we describe here are probabilistic. In
some cases, incumbents may run, and even accept defeat
in a close electoral contest, without themselves or senior
elites in their network resorting to violence. That was the
case in Nigeria in the 2015 presidential elections. Incum-
bent Goodluck Jonathan lost the election and relin-
quished power without significant violence. Even
though that outcome is inconsistent with our findings,
our analysis would suggest that something about his
patronage network or perhaps the quality of electoral
management bodies influenced why violence did not
happen. That said, in the same year, the electoral violence
experienced in Burundi, as President Pierre Nkurunziza
sought a third term, is consistent with our story. Our
analysis points to the existence of an elite surrounding
him as central to the use of violence. Going forward, it
will be valuable for researchers to compare violent and
nonviolent elections, conditional on incumbents running,
to deepen our understanding of electoral violence.
Replication data
The dataset, codebook, Online appendices, and do-files
for the statistical analysis can be found at http://
www.prio.org/jpr/datasets.
409
Acknowledgements
The authors thank Dorina Bekoe, Jeff Checkel, John Clark,
Brett Lacy, Jacqueline Klopp, Melanie Manion, Susanne
Mueller, Matt Scharf, Michael Schatzberg, Aili Tripp, Craw-
ford Young, the editors at Journal of Peace Research, and three
anonymous reviewers for comments on drafts.
Funding
The initial research for the project was supported with
grants to Scott Straus from the Harry Frank Guggen-
heim Foundation and the University of Wisconsin-
Madison Graduate School.
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411
CHARLES FERNANDES TAYLOR, b. 1983, PhD in
Political Science (University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2016);
Visiting Assistant Professor Political Science, Denison
University.
JON CW PEVEHOUSE, b. 1973, PhD in Political Science
(Ohio State University, 2000); Professor of Political Science
and International Studies, University of Wisconsin-
Madison.
SCOTT STRAUS, b. 1970, PhD in Political Science
(University of California, Berkeley, 2004); Professor of
Political Science and International Studies, University of
Wisconsin-Madison.