• Recap
• Electoral Violence
• Power Consolidation

Fearon and Laitin (2000) identify different different strategic logics:

• “elite manipulation”
  • political elites encourage/foment ethnic violence for strategic reasons
• “on-the-ground”
  • ordinary people have incentives to participate in ethnic violence

Political elites may encourage violence for several reasons:

• Win Elections:
  • increase attractiveness of ethnic vs other parties
  • suppress/displace voters for rival parties
• Consolidate power:
  • shift balance of power within ethnic group
  • establish political dominance of one ethnic group

Violence as a means to accomplish these goals (directly or indirectly)

Theorizes two strategic logics for ethnic violence:

1. Electoral incentives create a motive to perpetrate violence

2. Electoral incentives shape the opportunity for violence (the use of state/police forces to limit violence.)

Key empirical implications:

• ethnic parties must have capability to foment violence (yes)
• ethnic parties stand to gain from violence, should encourage it (anectdotally)
• violence is more likely near elections, and when elections are competitive (close) (maybe)
• violence should actually affect voting (yes)
• non-ethnic parties stand to lose, should stop violence

People with control over state/police/military forces have much stronger capacity to stop violence.

• e.g., arresting/shooting rioters likely to bring a halt to violence.
• Are there strategic incentives for governments to stop or permit violence to continue?

Confrontations across India in 2002 (squares), but major riots (dark circles) limited to Gujarat

Why did Gujarat permit riots to occur while other states did not?

Government strategy dictated by elections: will only stop violence if they directly or indirectly depend on votes of people targeted by the riots

This can happen under two sets of conditions:

1. When many parties compete successfully, minority group voters can determine who wins. Permitting riots that target this group may cost any ruling party victory at the next election.

2. When only a few parties are competitive, only parties that need the support of minority voters will stop riots against that group (non-ethnic parties stop violence; ethnic parties do not).

• States with many competitive parties protected Muslims
  • even in Orissa, Kerala, BJP led coalition stopped riots.
• States with few competitive parties but had ruling coalitions dependent on Muslim voters stopped riots.
• Only in Gujarat was there few competitive parties, ruling party did not need Muslim votes

This logic appears to hold more generally.

Examining Hindu-Muslim riots by month in Indian states between 1961-1995…

• when an Indian state has greater electoral competition (more competitive parties), making Muslims more pivotal, they have fewer riots
• this pattern holds, even when other attributes of the state/month are held constant

Nellis et al (2016)

Indian National Congress party historically depended on Muslim voters. As a non-ethnic party, Congress stood to lose from riots.

Does electing a Congress MLA cause a constituency to have fewer riots?

• when the non-ethnic party has both motive and opportunity, does it work to inhibit ethnic violence?

How would we know whether Congress MLAs stop riots?

• compare places with/without Congress MLAs?
• could there be bias in this comparison?

Nellis et al (2016) focus on places with random exposure to Congress MLA:

• Compare constituencies where Congress barely won (by \(<1\%\)) to where Congress barely lost (by \(<1\%\))
• like an experiment, with treatment (Congress MLA) and control (Non-Congress MLA)
• No significant differences between constituencies where Congress won vs lost close elections.

Congress Party responsive to presence of Muslim voters; not number of competing parties

Key empirical implications:

• ethnic parties must have capability to foment violence (yes)
• ethnic parties stand to gain from violence, should encourage it (anectdotally)
• violence is more likely near elections, and when elections are competitive (close) (maybe)
• violence should actually affect voting (yes)
• non-ethnic parties stand to lose, should stop violence (yes)

Overall…

Elite incentives that create motive to perpetrate violence:

• some evidence that this is true, but limits to evidence on competition logic
• unresolved question: why does elite manipulation “work”? “Why do the followers follow?”

Elite incentives that encourage controlling opportunity for ethnic violence:

• strong evidence that parties that need minority votes stop violence against those groups

1898 Racial Violence in North Carolina:

• 21 years after “end” of Reconstruction, return of whites to power in the South

While you watch, compare this to electoral logic of ethnic violence we’ve discussed so far:

• how are motives for violence similar/different?
• how are opportunities for violence similar/different?
• how are techniques for violence similar/different?

Discuss with your neighbors: compared to the electoral logic of ethnic violence in India we discussed earlier this week:

• how are motives for violence similar/different?
• how are opportunities for violence similar/different?
• how are techniques for violence similar/different?

Electoral logic: politicians/parties interested in winning office.

• use of ethnic violence is cynical tactic to win support of voters
• goal is to win next election, no agenda to end elections/change the rules
• violence “works” by unifying ethnic group around ethnic party

Power consolidation: politicians/parties have specific policy goals (group dominance, non-ethnic policy)

• use of violence to secure policy goals, change the rules
• violence “works” by intimidating/disempowering outgroup (as an end in itself)
• violence “works” by unifying ethnic group, to attain policy goals

Electoral logic

• only worthwhile just before an election
• violence does not need to be routinized
• primarily aimed at shifting voters preferences

Power consolidation

• violence may be useful before or after election to overturn/undo results.
• violence may be formalized (into violence that constitutes boundaries) with rule changes
• often aimed at intimidating “wrong” voters

electoral logic:

• parties exploit existing organizational networks

power consolidation:

• parties exploit existing organizational networks
• use of state coercive power (or insurgent organizations)

Before Wilmington Riot, similar events took place in 1870s:

• Ku Klux Klan and so-called “Redeemers” violently repressed black voters, overthrew elected legislatures/governors in the 1870s.
• E.g. in Louisiana, laid siege to state capitol building.

Epperly et al (2020) examine whether racial violence was used for power consolidation more broadly in the US:

White Southern elites were interested in either or both policy goals

• white supremacy
• limiting progressive economic policies (taxation, workers rights)

violence is strategically useful to…

• inhibit black political power
• prevent biracial political coalitions that enact progressive economic reforms

Different forms of violence available

lynching/mob violence

• could unify whites (if mob is large), intimidate African Americans
• but costly: arouse national attention, federal civil rights enforcement
• inefficient: sporadic, requiring collective action and coordination

legal system

• could legally bar most African Americans from voting
• violence is less visible
• efficient: enforced by state agencies, easier to coordinate

If lynching served as a form of power consolidation, then

1. should expect lynching to follow electoral logic when Jim Crow laws not in force
   • lynchings nearer in time to elections
   • lynchings when bi-racial coalitions are powerful
2. should expect lynching to no longer follow electoral logic once Jim Crow laws in effect
   • lynching no longer needed to take power; legal institutions replace it as form of power consolidation

Comparing counties within the same former slave states with

• similar proportion black population, cotton production; same year

Does lynching follow proximity to election? Success of bi-racial parties?

before Jim Crow (black lines)

during Jim Crow (gray lines), flat… no electoral logic

Other scholars find that…

• Lynching more likely in places with less white unity (in support for Democratic Party), though elections were not “close”
• Lynching more likely in cotton-producing counties when cotton prices drop (dividing white land-owners vs. white workers)

Unresolved questions:

• Why attack Wilmington after electoral defeat of Fusion government?
• What is the purpose of extensive media coverage invoking racist fears?
• Why hide the history of this event?

Hints at an answer to question: why do “followers follow” ethnic elites who manipulate votes using violence?

Ethnic violence is often accompanied by messages that:

• provide “facts”, narratives, and arguments that justify and encourage violence
  • highlight threat to moral relationship
  • signal support for violence

Power Consolidation motives for violence:

• involve policy goals (including ethnic hierarchy)
• willingness to change the rules
• may transition from “violence that transforms boundary” to “violence constitutive of boundary”