This concluding chapter summarizes the main findings of the book and draws out their implications for political science as well as for policies on institutional design, electoral administration, electoral assistance, and diplomacy. It considers the circumstances under which different strategies of electoral-violence prevention are likely to be successful and it provides a series of empirically grounded recommendations for the policy and practitioner communities. Though the previous chapters have sought to shed more systematic comparative light on electoral violence than has been available in previous work, the study of conflictual elections remains a relatively new area of research. Much exciting work will undoubtedly be carried out on this topic in the years to come. This emerging field may prove particularly relevant in the era of democratic backsliding that the world appears to be entering, and the role of violence in electoral processes throughout the modern history of democratic voting practices is a subject whose detailed analysis is long overdue.
Electoral violence prevention: what works?