Contentious Land Narratives and the Nonescalation of Election Violence: Evidence from Kenya’s Coast Region

2017 ◽  
Vol 60 (2) ◽  
pp. 51-72 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathleen Klaus
Keyword(s):  
Rift Valley ◽  
Regional Variation ◽  
Land Rights ◽  
The Political ◽  
Electoral Violence ◽  
Electoral Outcomes ◽  
Two Factors ◽  
Election Violence ◽  
Coast Region

Abstract:This article examines the puzzle of the nonescalation of electoral violence. Drawing on evidence from Kenya’s Coast and Rift Valley regions, the article argues that land narratives along the coast create few motives for people to participate in electoral violence because residents do not link their land rights with electoral outcomes. Politicians thus have far less power to use land narratives to organize violence. Two factors help account for this regional variation between the Rift Valley and the Coast: the strength of the political patron and the proportion of “outsiders” relative to “insiders.”

scholarly journals Unequal votes, unequal violence: Malapportionment and election violence in India

2019 ◽  
Vol 57 (1) ◽  
pp. 156-170 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ursula Daxecker
Keyword(s):  
Recent Work ◽  
State Level ◽  
Event Data ◽  
Parliamentary Elections ◽  
Electoral Violence ◽  
Voter Preferences ◽  
Electoral Outcomes ◽  
Industrialized Democracies ◽  
The One ◽  
Election Violence

Elections held outside of advanced, industrialized democracies can turn violent because elites use coercion to demobilize political opponents. The literature has established that closely contested elections are associated with more violence. I depart from this emphasis on competitiveness by highlighting how institutional biases in electoral systems, in particular uneven apportionment, affect incentives for violence. Malapportionment refers to a discrepancy between the share of legislative seats and the share of population, violating the ‘one person, one vote’ principle. Drawing on recent work on malapportionment establishing that overrepresented districts are targeted with clientelist strategies, are more homogenous, and are biased in favor of district-level incumbent parties, I argue that overrepresented districts present fewer incentives for using violence. In contrast, elites in well-apportioned or underrepresented districts exert less control over electoral outcomes because such districts have more heterogenous voter preferences, raising incumbent and opposition demands to employ violence. I examine the effects of malapportionment on violence using constituency-level elections data and new, disaggregated, and geocoded event data on the incidence of election violence in India. Results from six parliamentary elections from 1991 to 2009 show that electoral violence is less prevalent in overrepresented constituencies, and that violence increases in equally apportioned and moderately underrepresented districts. The analysis establishes additional observable implications of the argument for district voter homogeneity and incumbent victory, accounts for confounders such as urbanization and state-level partisanship, and validates measures of election violence. The findings illustrate that institutional biases shape incentives for electoral violence.

scholarly journals On Two Factors of National Identity: Orientation and Social Structure of Society

wisdom ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (7) ◽  
pp. 111
Author(s):  
Ashot VOSKANIAN
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Social Structure ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Political Orientation ◽  
Great Powers ◽  
The Political ◽  
Complex Relationship ◽  
Self Reliance ◽  
Two Factors ◽  
Identity Orientation

Given peculiarity of Armenian history, the Armenian political thought for centuries debated around geopolitical orientation between neighboring great powers. In post-Soviet reflections, however, the emphasis has been moved towards self-reliance, and the very principle of political orientation was questioned. The attitude towards Israel Ori, whose name was viewed as a symbol of the principle of orientation, became the locums for determining the political-ideological disposition of debater, as well as understanding their approaches towards different concepts of national identity. A brief comparison between the conceptual paradigms of two renowned historians Ashot Hovhannisyan (1887-1972) and Leo (Arakel Babakhanyan, 1860-1932) in relation to their attitude towards Israel Ori aims to demonstrate that questioning of the very principle of orientation has much deeper roots in Armenian historical studies than commonly is believed. It also illuminates the complex relationship between principle of orientation and desired model of social structure of society, which these two classics have revealed in rather different ways.

scholarly journals The Political Debate on Basic Income and Welfare Reform in Spain

2018 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 289-299 ◽  
Author(s):  
José A. Noguera
Keyword(s):  
Economic Feasibility ◽  
The Political ◽  
Basic Income ◽  
Political Debate ◽  
Stepping Stones ◽  
Welfare Policies ◽  
Radical Reform ◽  
Guarantee System ◽  
Two Factors ◽  
The One

Two factors have boosted the debate on Basic Income (BI) in Spain in recent years: on the one hand, the combination of welfare budget cuts and growing poverty rates has spread claims for a radical reform of Spanish welfare policies; on the other hand, the emergence of Podemos as a new key actor in the Spanish political arena has generated a vivid discussion on BI and income guarantee proposals. By reviewing the political debates on these proposals, I will argue that economic feasibility concerns and implementation problems are closely related to their political feasibility. Significantly, the radical rejection of ‘means-testing’ by BI defenders fails to grasp the different types and degrees of conditions that an income guarantee system may establish. The main lesson from the Spanish experience is that BI supporters should be ready to compromise and accept generous means-tested guaranteed income programs as stepping-stones.

Dilemmas of an Expert Witness

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stuart Kirsch
Keyword(s):  
Open Access ◽  
Land Tenure ◽  
Expert Witness ◽  
Land Rights ◽  
The Political ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Negative Consequences ◽  
Short Term ◽  
First Case ◽  
Indigenous Land

This chapter presents two affidavits submitted to the Inter-American Court. The first case was concerned with the negative consequences of Suriname’s refusal to recognize indigenous land rights, including the establishment of a nature reserve that become a de facto open-access zone on indigenous land. The second addressed problems associated with indigenous land tenure in Guyana under the Amerindian Act of 2006. Comparing the two cases allows the chapter to make several observations about the dynamics of short-term ethnographic research conducted for expert-witness reports. This includes the need to make affidavits legible to the three overlapping frames of the legal system, the communities seeking recognition of their rights, and anthropology. The chapter also considers the narrative choices in these affidavits, the political dilemmas of being an expert witness, and the compromises of short-term ethnography.

Revolutionary Politics and Theater of Semiotics

2016 ◽  
pp. 349-359
Author(s):  
Esther Nyam
Keyword(s):  
Federal Government ◽  
Good Health ◽  
Political Campaigns ◽  
Quality Education ◽  
The Political ◽  
Religious Conflicts ◽  
Revolutionary Politics ◽  
Present Trend ◽  
Social Amenities ◽  
Election Violence

In recent times, statistics have shown that the northern parts of Nigeria are poorer today than they were in the 1970s. Federal government of Nigeria is seen to be lacking in providing adequate security, quality education, good health facilities, agriculture, unemployment, infrastructure, social amenities and the like. Frustrated youths find themselves engaged in deadly politics, ethno-religious conflicts, political thuggery which has grown into political unrest and insurgency to be precise. The situation seems to be beyond repairs as seen in the present trend of the political campaigns, ethno-religious conflicts which is characterized by bombings, kidnapping, genocidal attacks, loss of lives and poverty, assassinations, hired killers, political blackmail, pre- and post-election violence. The thrust of this paper is to outline the recurring challenges and possible solutions of these revolutionary violent politics using varying semiotics with a view to finding a lasting solution for Nigeria's fragile democracy to progress to higher heights.

Land rights for marginalized ethnic groups in Botswana, with special reference to the Basarwa

1997 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-26 ◽  
Author(s):  
Clement Ng'ong'ola
Keyword(s):  
Special Reference ◽  
Ethnic Groups ◽  
Land Rights ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Status ◽  
Economic Position

Although, as the name of the country suggests, Botswana is populated mainly by Tswana-speaking peoples, it is acknowledged that the most indigenous or aboriginal inhabitants of the country are the San or Basarwa, identified and described in some of the literature as Bushmen. Basarwa also have the less admirable distinction of being perceived and depicted as the most marginalized of all the ethnic groups in the country. Concern about the status, and the political and economic position of Basarwa in Botswana has been expressed in numerous reports and writings, official and unofficial, and at various conferences, seminars and gatherings, national or international.

scholarly journals Active and passive: two ways party systems influence electoral outcomes

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 451-467
Author(s):  
Miroslav Nemčok
Keyword(s):  
Party System ◽  
Electoral Systems ◽  
Party Systems ◽  
Set Size ◽  
Electoral Outcomes ◽  
Chapel Hill ◽  
Ideological Polarization ◽  
Two Factors ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Choice Set

AbstractParties can not only actively adjust the electoral rules to reach more favourable outcomes, as is most often recognized in political science, but they also passively create an environment that systematically influences electoral competition. This link is theorized and included in the wider framework capturing the mutual dependence of electoral systems and party systems. The impact of passive influence is successfully tested on one out of two factors closely related to party systems: choice set size (i.e., number of options provided to voters) and degree of ideological polarization. The research utilizes established datasets (i.e., Constituency-Level Elections Archive, Party System Polarization Index, Chapel Hill Expert Survey, and Manifesto Project Database) and via regression analysis with clustered robust standard errors concludes that the choice set size constitutes an attribute with passive influence over electoral systems. Thus, it must be reflected when outcomes of electoral systems are estimated or compared across various contexts.

scholarly journals Strangers in Hostile Lands: Exposure to Refugees and Right-Wing Support in Germany’s Eastern Regions

2020 ◽  
pp. 001041402095767
Author(s):  
Max Schaub ◽  
Johanna Gereke ◽  
Delia Baldassarri
Keyword(s):  
The Political ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Refugee Crisis ◽  
Behavioral Measures ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Electoral Outcomes ◽  
Local Exposure ◽  
Matching Procedure ◽  
European Refugee Crisis ◽  
Political Right

Does local exposure to refugees increase right-wing support? This paper studies a case uniquely suited to address this question: the allocation of refugees to the rural hinterlands of eastern Germany during the European refugee crisis. Similar to non-urban regions elsewhere, the area has had minimal previous exposure to foreigners, but distinctively leans towards the political right. Our data comprise electoral outcomes, and individual-level survey and behavioral measures. A policy allocating refugees following strict administrative rules and a matching procedure allow for causal identification. Our measurements confirm the presence of widespread anti-immigrant sentiments. However, these are unaffected by the presence of refugees in respondents’ hometowns: on average, we record null effects for all outcomes, which we interpret as supporting a sociotropic perspective on immigration attitudes. Masked by these overall null findings, we observe convergence: local exposure to refugees appears to have pulled both right- and left-leaning individuals more towards the center.

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