This article provides a new perspective on the impact of elections on violent political instability in ethnically divided states. A number of scholars argue that elections may provoke large-scale violence in ethnically divided states. In this article, we theorize that elections have a pacifying effect in the most ethnically fractionalized countries as they reduce endemic uncertainty and encourage coalition building, lowering the rate at which electoral losers discount the future. Probit regressions using cross-national data for the period 1960-2010 support the notion that instability onsets are less likely in ethnically fractionalized states during election periods, and especially in the year after a national election.
ArellanoM.BonhommeS. (2011). Nonlinear panel data analysis. Annual Review of Economics, 3, 395-424.
2.
BieberF.WolffS. (2005). Introduction: Elections and divided societies. Ethnopolitics, 4, 359-363.
3.
BormannN.GirardinL.HunzikerP.VogtM. (2015, August17). GROWup research front-end documentation RFE release 2.0. ETH Zurich. Retrieved from http://growup.ethz.ch/rfe
BrancatiD.SnyderJ. L. (2013). Time to kill: The impact of election timing on postconflict stability. Journal of Conflict Resolution, 57, 822-853.
6.
BraumoellerB. F. (2004). Hypothesis testing and multiplicative interaction terms. International Organization, 58, 807-820.
7.
BrownleeJ. (2007). Authoritarianism in an age of democratization. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
8.
ButcherC. (2015). “Capital punishment”: Bargaining and the geography of civil war. Journal of Peace Research, 52, 171-186.
9.
CarlsonE. (2015). Ethnic voting and accountability in Africa: A choice experiment in Uganda. World Politics, 67, 353-385.
10.
CarterD. B.SignorinoC. S. (2010). Back to the future: Modeling time dependence in binary data. Political Analysis, 18, 271-292.
11.
CedermanL.GirardinL. (2007). Beyond fractionalization: Mapping ethnicity onto nationalist insurgencies. American Political Science Review, 101, 173-185.
12.
CedermanL.GleditschK. S.HugS. (2013). Elections and ethnic civil war. Comparative Political Studies, 46, 387-417.
13.
CedermanL.WimmerA.MinB. (2010). Why do ethnic groups rebel? New data and analysis. World Politics, 62, 87-119.
14.
CheesemanN.HinfelaarM. (2010). Parties, platforms, and political mobilization: The Zambian presidential election of 2008. African Affairs, 109(434), 51-76.
15.
CollierP.HoefflerA.SöderbomM. (2008). Post-conflict risks. Journal of Peace Research, 45, 461-478.
16.
CoxG. W. (2009, August). Authoritarian elections and leadership succession, 1975–2004. Presented at the American Political Science Association Annual Convention, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
17.
CunninghamD. E. (2011). Barriers to peace in civil war. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
18.
CunninghamK. G. (2013). Actor fragmentation and civil war bargaining: How internal divisions generate civil conflict. American Journal of Political Science, 57, 659-672.
19.
DannemanN.RitterE. H. (2014). Contagious rebellion and preemptive repression. Journal of Conflict Resolution, 58, 254-279.
20.
DunningT. (2011). Fighting and voting: Violent conflict and electoral politics. Journal of Conflict Resolution, 55, 327-339.
21.
EasterlyW.LevineR. (1997). Africa’s growth tragedy: Policies and ethnic divisions. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 112, 1203-1250.
22.
EllisS. (2007). The mask of anarchy: The destruction of Liberia and the religious dimension of an African civil war. London, England: C. Hurst & Co.
23.
EstebanJ.MayoralL.RayD. (2012a). Ethnicity and conflict: An empirical study. The American Economic Review, 102, 1310-1342.
24.
EstebanJ.MayoralL.RayD. (2012b). Ethnicity and conflict: Theory and facts. Science, 336, 858-865.
25.
FearonJ. D. (1995). Rationalist explanations for war. International Organization, 49, 379-414.
26.
FearonJ. D. (2003). Ethnic and cultural diversity by country. Journal of Economic Growth, 8, 195-222.
27.
FearonJ. D. (2011). Self-enforcing democracy. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 126, 1661-1708.
28.
FearonJ. D.LaitinD. D. (2003). Ethnicity, insurgency, and civil war. American Political Science Review, 97, 75-90.
29.
FjeldeH.HöglundK. (2016). Electoral institutions and electoral violence in Sub-Saharan Africa. British Journal of Political Science, 46, 297-320.
30.
FloresT. E.NooruddinI. (2012). The effect of elections on postconflict peace and reconstruction. The Journal of Politics, 74, 558-570.
31.
FortiniC. (2012). Alliance formation in civil wars. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
32.
GandhiJ.Lust-OkarE. (2009). Elections under authoritarianism. Annual Review of Political Science, 12, 403-422.
GleditschK. S. (2007). Transnational dimensions of civil war. Journal of Peace Research, 44, 293-309.
35.
GleditschN. P.WallensteenP.ErikssonM.SollenbergM.StrandH. (2002). Armed conflict 1946-2001: A new dataset. Journal of Peace Research, 39, 615-637.
36.
GoldsmithA. A. (2015). Elections and civil violence in new multiparty regimes: Evidence from Africa. Journal of Peace Research, 52, 607-621.
37.
GoldstoneJ. A.BatesR. H.EpsteinD. L.GurrT. R.LustikM. B.MarshallM. G.. . . WoodwardM. (2010). A global forecasting model of political instability. American Journal of Political Science, 54, 190-208.
38.
HonakerJ.KingG.BlackwellM. (2011). Amelia II: A program for missing data. Journal of Statistical Software, 45(7), 1-47.
39.
HorowitzD. L. (1985). Ethnic groups in conflict. Los Angeles: University of California Press.
40.
HorowitzD. L. (1993). Democracy in divided societies. Journal of Democracy, 4(4), 18-38.
41.
HydeS. D.MarinovN. (2012). Which elections can be lost?Political Analysis, 20, 191-210.
42.
ImaiK.KingG.LauO. (2008). Toward a common framework for statistical analysis and development. Journal of Computational Graphics and Statistics, 17, 892-913.
43.
JarstadA. K. (2008). Power sharing: Former enemies in joint government. In JarstadA. K.SiskT. D. (Eds.), From war to democracy: Dilemmas of peacebuilding (pp. 105-133). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
44.
KuranT. (1995). The inevitability of future revolutionary surprises. American Journal of Sociology, 100, 1528-1551.
45.
LichbachM. I. (1998). The rebel’s dilemma. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
46.
LipjhartL. (2004). Constitutional design for divided societies. Journal of Democracy, 15, 96-109.
47.
Lust-OkarE. (2006). Elections under authoritarianism: Preliminary lessons from Jordan. Democratization, 13, 456-471.
48.
MagaloniB. (2006). Voting for autocracy: Hegemonic party survival and its demise in Mexico. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
49.
MarshallM. G. (2015). Major episodes of political violence (MEPV) and conflict regions, 1946–2014. Vienna, VA: Center for Systemic Peace. Available from www.systemicpeace.org
50.
MarshallM. G.GurrT. R.HarffB. (2015). PITF—State failure problem set: Internal wars and failures of governance, 1955–2014 [Dataset and coding rules]. Political Instability (formerly, State Failure) Task Force (PITF). Retrieved from http://www.systemicpeace.org/inscr/PITFProbSetCodebook2014.pdf
51.
MarshallM. G.JaggersK.GurrT. (2015). Polity IV project: Political regime characteristics and transitions, 1800-2013 (Dataset users’ manual, version 2014). Fort Collins: Colorado State University. Retrieved from http://www.systemicpeace.org/polity/polity4.htm
52.
MarshallM. G.MarshallD. (2015). Coup d’etat events, 1960–2014. Vienna, VA: Center for Systemic Peace.
53.
MillerM. K. (2014). Elections, information, and policy responsiveness in autocratic regimes. Comparative Political Studies, 48, 691-727.
54.
MontalvoJ. G.Reynal-QuerolM. (2005). Ethnic polarization, potential conflict, and civil wars. American Economic Review, 95, 796-816.
55.
MontalvoJ. G.Reynal-QuerolM. (2010). Ethnic polarization and the duration of civil wars. Economics of Governance, 11, 123-143.
56.
NorrisP. (2002). Ballots not bullets: Testing consociational theories of ethnic conflict, electoral systems, and democratization. In ReynoldsA. (Ed.), The architecture of democracy: Constitutional design, conflict management, and democracy (pp. 206-247). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
57.
PangX. (2010). “Modeling heterogeneity and serial correlation in binary time-series cross-sectional data: A Bayesian multilevel model with AR(p) errors. Political Analysis, 18, 470-498.
58.
PosnerD. N. (2004). Measuring ethnic fractionalization in Africa. American Journal of Political Science, 48, 849-863.
59.
PrzeworskiA. (2011). Divided we stand: Democracy as a method of processing conflicts. Scandinavian Political Studies, 34, 168-182.
60.
ReillyB. (2001a). Democracy, ethnic fragmentation and internal conflict: Confused theories, faulty data, and the “crucial case” of Papua New Guinea. International Security, 25, 162-185.
61.
ReillyB. (2001b). Democracy in divided societies: Electoral engineering for conflict management. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
62.
ReillyB. (2002). Electoral systems for divided societies. Journal of Democracy, 13, 156-170.
63.
Reynal-QuerolM. (2002). Ethnicity, political systems, and civil wars. Journal of Conflict Resolution, 46, 29-54.
64.
RogersW. H. (1993). Regression standard errors in clustered samples. Stata Technical Bulletin, 13, 19-23.
65.
SalehyanI. (2007). Transnational rebels: Neighboring states as sanctuary for rebel groups. World Politics, 59, 217-242.
66.
SalehyanI.LinebargerC. (2014). Elections and social conflict in Africa, 1990–2009. Studies in Comparative International Development, 50, 23-49.
67.
SchedlerA. (2002). The menu of manipulation. Journal of Democracy, 13(2), 36-50.
68.
SchedlerA. (2006). The logic of electoral authoritarianism. In Schedler (Ed.), Electoral authoritarianism: The dynamics of unfree competition (pp. 1-23). Boulder CO: Lynne-Rienner.
69.
SelwayJ.TemplemanK. (2012). The myth of consociationalism? Conflict reduction in divided societies. Comparative Political Studies, 45, 1542-1571.
70.
SnyderJ. (2000). From voting to violence: Democratization and nationalist conflict. New York, NY: W.W. Norton.
VreelandJ. R. (2008). The effect of political regime on civil war: Unpacking anocracy. Journal of conflict Resolution, 52, 401-425.
76.
WahmanM. (2013). Opposition coalitions and democratization by elections. Government and Opposition, 48, 3-32.
77.
WalterB. F. (2009). Bargaining failures and civil war. Annual Review of Political Science, 12, 243-261.
78.
WaltzK. (1979). Theory of international relations. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.
79.
WarrenT. C.TroyK. K. (2015). Explaining violent intra-ethnic conflict: Group fragmentation in the shadow of state power. Journal of Conflict Resolution, 59, 484-509.
80.
WegenastT. C.BasedauM. (2014). Ethnic fractionalization, natural resources and armed conflict. Conflict Management and Peace Science, 31, 432-457.
81.
WeidmannN. B. (2009). Geography as motivation and opportunity: Group concentration and ethnic conflict. Journal of Conflict Resolution, 53, 526-543.
82.
WigT.HegreH.ReganP. M. (2015). Updated data on institutions and elections 1960–2012: Presenting the IAEP dataset version 2.0.Research & Politics, 2(2). doi:10.1177/2053168015579120
83.
WigT.RødE. G. (2014). Cues to coup plotters: Elections as coup triggers in dictatorships. Journal of Conflict Resolution, 60, 787-812.
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
