Understanding electoral violence

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THE number of electoral democratic countries has increased significantly from the year 1989 to 2011. It was 69 in 1989 and has become 117 in 2011. Now, 60% countries of the world have electoral democracy. In the year 2001, elections were held in 57 countries, and violent conflicts were witnessed in 14 countries -- violence is known to affect from 19 to 25% of elections in the African countries.

In recent years, news about electoral conflicts and violence has become a prevalent phenomenon, which we witness almost every day through the media. But many people do not understand 'what electoral violence is?' and many question 'why electoral violence?'

Unfortunately few researchers and practitioners have made an effort to define and conceptualise electoral violence. IFES defines "election violence is any harm or threat of harm to any person or property involved in the election process, or to the election process itself, during the election period."

Liisa Laakso defined it as "an activity motivated by an attempt to affect the results of the elections either by manipulating the electoral procedure and participation or by contesting the legitimacy of the results. It might involve voters' and candidates' intimidation, killings, attacks against their property, forceful displacement, unlawful detentions and rioting."

According to UNDP, election-related violence refers as "acts or threats of coercion, intimidation, or physical harm perpetrated to affect an electoral process or that arise in the context of electoral competition. When perpetrated to affect an electoral process, violence may be employed to influence the process of elections, such as efforts to delay, disrupt, or derail a poll-and to influence the outcomes-the determining of winners in competitive races for political office or to secure approval or disapproval of referendum questions."

The features of electoral violence have made it distinct from other type of political violence. It might occur in the pre-election period, on the Election Day and during the post-election period of the electoral process. And, involves different actors like government forces (police and military), political parties (leaders, members and sympathisers) and non-state armed groups (militias, rebels and paramilitaries).

Importantly, it has specific targets and these include electoral partakers (like electorates, candidates, election officers, observers and media groups), electoral materials (like ballot boxes, campaign related stuffs, registration data, polling results), electoral facilities (like voting and tallying stations) and electoral events (like campaign meetings and demonstrations, journeys to voting stations). It includes various activities such as threats, coercion, abduction, torture and many more.

The nature of politics, participating actors, elections, and design of electoral institutions are important factors to determine whether election will be free-fair and violence-free. In 'Patrimonialism' politics where the right to rule is ascribed to a person rather than an office, and the distinction between public and private domain is absent, a significant portion of a society is marginalised, and there lies more emphasis to loyalty than competence.

Thus promoting corruption, neglecting the rule of law and can trigger electoral violence.

In 'clientelism,' part of neo-patrimonialism, relations are personal, 'patron-client' relations, and the client is expected to give political support for a particular patron or politician in order to secure personal benefits such as land, office etc. In 'patronage,' also part of neo-patrimonialism, relations is more than personal, 'high-level politics' and the clients are required to provide political support for a specific political party or a government in return for public utilities like roads, schools etc.

Politicians of clientelism politics use money to buy vote and use ethno-religious appeal for securing political support and electorates use their vote as a means of obtaining material rewards in patronage politics. This kind of politics could be the cause for violent conflict and may risk to peaceful political transitions.

In post-conflict societies it is found that political parties are not organised on the basis of diverse perspectives and bear almost similar ideology. Parties are fragmented, underdeveloped and hardly make policies putting public demands in the first place. They organised political support along ethnic lines and multiply existing ethnic cleavages.

Political parties representing diverse ethno-regional interests can also resort to violence, realising that they are losers of the electoral process and its outcome and marginalised groups who gained less than their expectations may opt for violence as an alternative to achieve their political goals.

The nature of elections can also be the cause for electoral violence. Usually in competitive elections, political parties emphasise mainly on what make them distinct from others and use strong nationalistic and ethnic appeals to secure political support. The opposition party and their supporters, who lost via competitive election, may consider violent alternatives to assume state power and to resolve their long standing demands or grievances.

The design of electoral institutions like electoral systems, electoral rules and regulations and election administration can also be the source of electoral violence. Electoral system can be divided into plurality-majority, proportional representation, and semi proportional systems.

Studies have shown that in post-war transition period, powerful groups chose the electoral system, from which they will get maximum benefits or will ensure their victory. In countries, where ethnic-based political parties are predominant and the political arena is less tolerant of opposing views, plural-majority systems or winner-take-all system can facilitates a zero-sum game and builds a risk of electoral conflict and violence, which we can see in many African countries.

The nature of electoral management bodies can also be instrumental in facilitating the conditions for election related violence. These bodies can be divided into partial-partisan and independent-non partisan models. In many developing countries, where partial-partisan model follows a lack of the required impartiality, independence and competence is observed, resulting in high-level mistrust and creating divisions among political parties, ultimately heightened the risk of electoral violence.

Formal and informal rules of electoral game, like the rules of electoral competition and rules of electoral governance can facilitate conditions conducive to containing electoral conflict and violence. Rules of electoral competition consist of issues such as electoral formulas, district magnitude and boundaries, assembly size etc.

And rules of electoral governance cover areas like party, candidate and voter eligibility and registration, vote counting, tabulating and reporting techniques, election monitoring and conflict resolution mechanisms and campaign financing etc.

Authoritarian regimes of many newly democratising countries adopt and practice different sets of informal rules that make electoral competition undemocratic. These rules include, different kind of restrictions imposed on the political rights and civil liberties of citizens, limiting the rights of different social and political organisations to assemble for their own cause, control of the state as well as private print and electronic media, keeping political opponents or figures away from electoral competition etc. And often such regimes use electoral fraud to secure public office.

The writer is a Development Professional.
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