http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey-cage/wp/2015/08/17/reexamining-ballots-and-bullets/
Reexamining ballots and bullets
By Paul Staniland August 17 at 3:00 PM
Burundi military and police forces stand in formation as they guard
the venue for the Conseil National pour la Defense de la Democratie –
Forces pour Defense de la Democratie (CNDD-FDD) party congress in the
capital, Bujumbura, April 25, 2015. Burundi President Pierre
Nkurunziza spoke for the first time on seeking a third term moments
after the ruling party nominated him. Nkurunziza’s opponents have said
another term for him would be unconstitutional. REUTERS/Thomas Mukoya
Electoral violence is an unfortunately common feature of headlines
around the world. Burundi’s government has violently targeted its
opposition before and after the country’s recent elections. In Iraq,
powerful Shiite political parties have their own militias, while other
militias are hoping to enter electoral politics. Pakistan’s military
is aggressively targeting Karachi’s most important armed political
party, yet another chapter in a long history of election-linked
violence in the city.
Elections can tip unstable post-conflict environments into renewed
warfare, yoke non-state actors into networks of armed patronage and
undermine the quality of democracy. Rather than alternatives,
elections and coercion are often intertwined. Policymakers are
increasingly trying to understand how to free democratic politics from
the shadow of the gun, but are limited by a narrow concept of this
violence, its actors, and causes.
In recent research published in Comparative Politics (ungated), I
identify new insights about the relationships between violence and
electoral politics, the simplest but most important of which is that
“electoral violence” is far more diverse than commonly appreciated.
Multiple kinds of actors, from local landlords to ruling parties, use
violence in pursuit of very different goals. These varieties of
electoral violence have different causes and require different policy
responses.
Most of what we conventionally associate with electoral violence can
be described as “intra-systemic,” in which coercion, displacement,
killing and intimidation are deployed to win elections. This violence
is sometimes carried out by government security forces (as Susan Hyde
and Emilie Hafner-Burton have discussed) against dissidents and
opponents. Sometimes, however, non-state allies of the regime, such as
militias and armed wings of ruling parties, operate as shock troops to
shatter electoral challenges. They kill or displace electoral rivals
and their potential supporters. Contemporary Ethiopia and 1950s Burma
are examples of these pro-regime logics of violence. Coercion is
particularly important for competitive authoritarian regimes that
manipulate illiberal elections with “thugs” and security forces.
Opposition parties can also arm themselves and fight back against
rulers and their backers. This can lead to full-scale militarized
elections, fusing ballots and bullets. At various points, Bangladesh,
Kenya and India’s West Bengal have experienced highly militarized
elections campaigns: ruling and opposition parties use violence, while
trying to simultaneously get their own voters to the polls, build
patronage networks and develop policy positions. This type of
“pro-systemic” electoral violence can also undermine democratic
representation and accountability, by influencing voters’ choices
through threats and actively rigging and manipulating campaigns and
voting.
In other cases, however, electoral violence is “anti-systemic.” Rather
than winning elections, violence is intended to prevent
democratization or destroy democratic politics altogether. The Burmese
military crackdown of 1988-1990 deployed violence to shatter
democratization. Support for armed groups by elements of the apartheid
regime in early 1990s South Africa was intended to undermine the
democratic transition. Key party-linked paramilitaries in Weimar
Germany ultimately sought to replace German democracy with communist
or fascist dictatorship. The Pakistani Taliban launched sustained
attacks on rallies and candidates during the 2013 general election,
reflecting its deep ideological opposition to the electoral process
and specific parties.
Given these disparate kinds of violence, it is also important to
recognize there is no single cause of electoral violence either. To
avoid conceptual stretching, scholars must disaggregate types of
election-related violence both in theory and data. The Pakistani
Taliban’s onslaught against electoral practice was likely driven by
very different mechanisms, and took on markedly different forms, than
politicians’ support for criminal gangs in post-New Order Indonesia.
Consequently, policymakers need to respond to the specific logic(s) of
electoral violence at work. Sometimes governments are to blame for
violence, while in other cases armed opposition parties or unaligned
local actors are responsible. Assigning this responsibility requires
careful analysis of the motivations and capabilities of the key
political players. Groups using violence to win elections will respond
to very different incentives than those trying to forestall or
overthrow democracy, while local private armies and formal state
security forces have distinct strengths and vulnerabilities. The
typology I advance in my article provides a framework for making these
distinctions.
Similar diversity can also be found among electoral armed groups
themselves. Taking armed groups seriously, as I show in International
Studies Quarterly (ungated), is essential for understanding
militarized elections. Usually we think of these groups as simple
proxies for rulers, deployed to achieve government aims behind a veil
of deniability. In many cases this is absolutely correct, with armed
groups lacking independence from the regime.
Nevertheless, some electoral armed groups are autonomous of state
patronage and support. They are powerful free agents that bargain with
or defy rulers. Governments cannot easily shut down these
organizations and instead are forced to make concessions for their
cooperation or support. As regimes maneuver to advance their
ideological and electoral interests—and armed groups respond— several
distinct armed orders can emerge, including the incorporation of armed
groups into the state, their normalization as a part of the political
landscape or even open conflict with the state. For instance, rural
private armies of the Philippines and armed Kurdish parties of
northern Iraq have bargained with central rulers, while in India’s
Punjab in the early 1980s a militant group that was supported by
Congress Party elites for electoral reasons turned against the state,
triggering a decade-long insurgency.
These “armed politics” between states and armed actors are most
important where violence and elections enduringly co-exist. In these
contexts, whether Iraq or north India, standard distinctions between
civil conflict and electoral violence, war and peace, and political
parties and armed groups break down. Improving our understanding of
these politics is crucial for making sense of a contemporary political
landscape that all too often blends violence and voting.
Paul Staniland is an assistant professor of political science,
co-director of the Program on International Security Policy, and
co-founder of the Program on Political Violence at the University of
Chicago. He is the author of Networks of Rebellion: Explaining
Insurgent Cohesion and Collapse (Cornell University Press, 2014).
Received on Tue Aug 18 2015 - 10:39:57 EDT