Wilkinson (2004) Votes and Violence

Week 2: Wilkinson (2004) Votes and Violence

This book is also really great because they bring to the forefront real issues that affect elections in most parts of the world election violence! Why are elections so bloody in the rest of the world? What is it about elections that brings out the nut jobs, is there something wrong with us? The fear that filled the air in Zimbabwe in 2008, Sierra Leone 2007, Kenya 2008, Ghana we all exhaled deeply when the election was peaceful. Why isn’t this the status quo? Look at Ivory Coast the blood that has been shed since the elections. I was telling someone that I am planning a trip home to Zimbabwe in June and their reaction was “isn’t that during elections? Will you be safe?” I don’t understand. It is not just the developing world though but I think there is more of it there. I know people are always pointing out the faults of the US but I think elections are one place this country fully understands. I am not saying they are always on point there is always room to learn and improve but here and elsewhere losers admit to losing the election and go back to the drawing board. They do not bring out the guns (at least not always) and if they did the rule of law prevails.

Vicente and Collier (2010) discuss how violence has become an actual election currency. Anyway moving on to Wilkinson….

Argument: Violence is electronically engineered by politicians- this is a rational actor agent centered model. He suggests using evidence from elections in India that politicians (both the opposition and incumbent) will use violence if they think that they can get some votes by doing so.

Motivation :

-       Why does ethnic violence occur during elections (I think the focus on ethnic violence is a weakness because you have homogenous countries with tons of vio as well)

-       What causes the variation is violence? Why does violence occur at sometimes but not others?

-       The current focus in the literature was on that violence occurs but no one has asked why it happens.

-       What explains Hindi-Muslim violence in the Indian context

-       He wants to be able to explain not just violence but also peace –this book does a much better job of explaining peace since there is really only one case of violence in the dataset.

Variables

-       Dependent -The number of riots in a state in a month (during election season)-There is a danger of over counting when using this method

-       Independent- Electorally engineered violence –competitiveness of the election

The book review

In Votes and Violence Wilkinson argues that electoral violence is a political tool used by politicians if they think it will benefit them. Using India as a case study he finds that politicians have either prevented or incited violence when there were political gains to be had. In states where minority votes matter politicians prevent violence and in states where minority votes disadvantage political elites they will encourage violence.

What is the author’s answer to this question? Wilkinson’s main argument is that violence (especially during election season) is electronically engineered. Politicians will either stop or encourage violence if they think that it is to their advantage to do so. Using data sets from electronic returns, content analysis and interviews he finds that there is a relationship between the amount and length of violence and which parties win. The strongest part of the book is that instead of merely telling the reader what his argument is that the author addresses conventional explanations and such as state weakness, consociational and town-level socio-economic factors and points out their weaknesses as they relate to electoral violence. He argues that state capacity alone does not predict violence because at least in his Indian State case studies there was a lot of variation in levels of state capacity in states that experienced electoral violence and those that did not. He also argues that the type of government is not an important explanatory factor for electoral violence. With regards to the state capacity argument he finds that political elites use their access to the law enforcement officers to prevent or allow for violence to occur depending on whether such a move helps them win votes.

There is no relationship between the decision to use violence and state capacity, weak and strong states have an equal chance for electoral violence when we do not control for political incentives. Wilkinson’s argument is weakest when he addresses the argument on the type of government and how that relates to electoral violence. Unlike Lijphart he is arguing that India has in fact become more consociational despite the growing violence. I think that that he finds this relationship because he does not control for the stock effect of democracy or time and his study only dates back to 1995.I am sure that if he were to repeat his studies he would in fact find that the level violence has decreased as India’s democracy has become representative of the diverse groups.

The author does not do justice to economic explanations. His main argument is that in areas were the minority is important violence will be low and vice versa but what about the role of economy as a mitigating factor. As I read this I thought that business people are more likely to lobby politicians to prevent violence if it affects their profits thus we should see politicians in major business centers behaving differently to those in non-commercial states. Another weakness is that this is a very agent centered argument, which ignores other actors such as the media and voters themselves. Is it possible that the media might boycott a politician if he/she is suspected of using violence or can regular citizens also incite violence if they think it will gain political attention? There are also times when violence is not engineered by a politician but comes about as a response to social situations.

Wilkinson’s argument is strongest when he is explaining peace because his results show only one case of violence and more than 5 cases in which violence was presented. This I think this really informative and pushes against the conventional wisdom that politicians always want violence. His findings reveal that in most instances violence can backfire and politicians are aware of this which explains why most times violence was prevented.

The book is very well structured and easy to follow. The first two chapters set up the argument chapters three and four discuss past arguments, chapters five and six present his results and chapters seven and eight conclude the discussion with a look at generalizability and recommendation. Although this arrangement is very nice and easy to follow as I mention earlier it is also weak because we end up with weak chapter four which could have been included in three but for stylistic purposes was kept. Chapter eight is also a weak link not only because it is eight pages long but because it is not well built. I really appreciated chapter seven which takes the argument beyond India and chapter eight could have been weaved in.