Why do elections frequently lead to conflict instead of peace? Birch, Daxecker, and Höglund (2020) explain that outside established democracies, voting often involves electoral violence, which operates as a distinct subtype of political violence.
In introducing this special issue, the authors point out that while elections take place across almost every country today to ensure peaceful transfers of power, contests held outside consolidated democracies are often accompanied by significant violence. Birch, Daxecker, and Höglund emphasize that electoral violence has its own analytical and empirical dynamics, making it distinct from other forms of organized violence and qualitatively different from nonviolent electoral manipulation.
The authors review existing knowledge regarding the causes and consequences of electoral violence, point out notable research gaps, and present the collection of articles in the issue. These contributions advance the literature across four core areas: the micro-level targeting and consequences of electoral violence, its institutional roots, the factors that create high-stakes elections, and how electoral violence fits into broader patterns of organized violence. Finally, Birch, Daxecker, and Höglund emphasize the geographic and methodological breadth of the studies, which examine Africa, Latin America, and Asia using ethnography, survey data, vignette and list experiments, and quantitative subnational and crossnational event data.
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Birch, S., Daxecker, U., & Höglund, K. (2020). Electoral violence: An introduction. Journal of Peace Research, 57(1), 3–14. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022343319889657