The Logic of Insurgent Electoral Violence

Competitive elections are essential to establishing the political legitimacy of democratizing regimes. We argue that insurgents undermine the state’s mandate through electoral violence. We study insurgent violence during elections using newly declassified microdata on the conflict in Afghanistan. Ou...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inThe American economic review Vol. 108; no. 11; pp. 3199 - 3231
Main Authors Condra, Luke N., Long, James D., Shaver, Andrew C., Wright, Austin L.
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Nashville American Economic Association 01.11.2018
Subjects
Elections
Insurgency
Legitimacy
Political violence
Violence
Voter behavior
Voting
Afghanistan
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Summary:Competitive elections are essential to establishing the political legitimacy of democratizing regimes. We argue that insurgents undermine the state’s mandate through electoral violence. We study insurgent violence during elections using newly declassified microdata on the conflict in Afghanistan. Our data track insurgent activity by hour to within meters of attack locations. Our results suggest that insurgents carefully calibrate their production of violence during elections to avoid harming civilians. Leveraging a novel instrumental variables approach, we find that violence depresses voting. Collectively, the results suggest insurgents try to depress turnout while avoiding backlash from harming civilians. Counterfactual exercises provide potentially actionable insights for safeguarding at-risk elections and enhancing electoral legitimacy in emerging democracies.
ISSN:0002-8282
1944-7981
DOI:10.1257/aer.20170416