Fear of campaign violence and support for democracy and autocracy

von Borzyskowski, Inken; Daxecker, Ursula; Kuhn, Patrick M.

doi:10.1177/07388942211026319

Fear of campaign violence and support for democracy and autocracy

von Borzyskowski, Inken; Daxecker, Ursula; Kuhn, Patrick M.

Authors

Inken von Borzyskowski

Ursula Daxecker

Professor Patrick Kuhn p.m.kuhn@durham.ac.uk
Professor

Abstract

Election violence is common in many developing countries and has potentially detrimental implications for democratic consolidation. Drawing on political psychology, we argue that citizens’ fear of campaign violence undermines support for democracy while increasing support for autocracy. Using individual-level survey data from 21 electoral democracies in Sub-Saharan Africa, we find robust support for our argument. Citizens fearing campaign violence are less likely to support democracy and multi-party competition, more likely to favor a return to autocracy, and less likely to turn out to vote. Our findings have important implications for democratic survival and provide further impetus for reducing electoral violence.

Citation

von Borzyskowski, I., Daxecker, U., & Kuhn, P. M. (2022). Fear of campaign violence and support for democracy and autocracy. Conflict Management and Peace Science, 39(5), 542-564. https://doi.org/10.1177/07388942211026319

Journal Article Type	Article
Acceptance Date	May 30, 2021
Online Publication Date	Jul 5, 2021
Publication Date	Sep 1, 2022
Deposit Date	Jul 5, 2021
Publicly Available Date	Aug 19, 2021
Journal	Conflict Management and Peace Science
Print ISSN	0738-8942
Electronic ISSN	1549-9219
Publisher	SAGE Publications
Peer Reviewed	Peer Reviewed
Volume	39
Issue	5
Pages	542-564
DOI	https://doi.org/10.1177/07388942211026319

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Online First This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).