Understanding Why Electoral Violence Varies: A Study of Nigeria

• In Event: Electoral Violence and Conflict in Africa

Abstract

How do rents impact the scale of electoral violence? Although studies affirm that rents are positively correlated with the onset of conflict, work on rents are largely aggregate studies exploring the link between rents and conflicts within the context of civil wars. To explain the impact of rents on the scale of subnational electoral violence, I argue that the uneven distribution of rents in decentralized governments impacts incumbents' capacity to foment violence. Given the strategic value of rents, incumbents with access to high rents areas use rents to enhance capacity for large-scale violence, while incumbents in low rents areas limited in financial capacity are more inclined to engage in low-scale violence. I selected Nigeria as the case because the uneven distribution of rents across states results in varying financial capacities among subnational incumbents. To test the argument, I created a novel dataset, coding electoral violence events in the 2007, 2011, 2015, and 2019 Nigerian elections. I merge this dataset with the federally allocated resource rents in the 36 Nigerian states to analyze the scale of violence across high and low rents states, inclusive of control variables. Findings show that rents are positively correlated with the scale of electoral violence. The findings are relevant to advancing work on the patterns of subnational electoral violence and to establishing the link between conflict and violence.

Author

• Maureen Asehtongha Fubara, University of Amsterdam