Pathways to Violence: A Reanalysis of The Relationship Between Elections and Civil Violence in Authoritarian Regimes

Abstract

Taiwo John Adeagbo

This review essay reexamines and synthesizes existing literature on the relationship between elections and violence in authoritarian regimes. Two decades and a half after Geddes’s seminal article, political scientists and policymakers alike continue to grapple with the question of why some authoritarian regimes remain stable in the face of elections while others do not, and under what conditions do elections lead to violence and instability in some authoritarian regimes but maintain stability in others. This essay engages these questions by reviewing what we know about electoral authoritarianism after these years. Starting with early works on electoral authoritarian regimes and regime types, I observe that the variation in authoritarian regimes is a function of state capacity and institutional foundation. Furthermore, irrespective of these regime subtypes, elections themselves are not intrinsically violent. Still, they may lead to violence under certain conditions, such as weak institutional capacity, strong opposition coalitions, and evidence of past conflicts. These findings are consistent with the scholarship on post-conflict elections, which suggests that decisive victories, demobilization, peacekeeping, and strong political institutions can mitigate the risk of violence in post-conflict elections.

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