Violence for control Explaining violent local elections in India

Existing research shows that incumbents are the primary perpetrators of election violence, with growing evidence that they manipulate local elections through violence. However, given that local elections are often perceived as low-stakes contests, the presence of violence in these settings is puzzling. This dissertation develops a theory of violent electoral control to explain why provincial incumbents resort to violence in local elections and how they collaborate with partisan and local actors to organize it.
The study argues that incumbent parties use violence to establish and maintain political control at the grassroots level through two key strategies: consolidation and expansion. These strategies produce variation in where violence occurs and what outcomes it generates. Violence for consolidation is used in incumbent strongholds to prevent opposition participation and engineer uncontested seats. Violence for expansion is used in competitive areas to demobilize the opposition and disrupt elections to increase the incumbent’s vote share.
The Indian state of West Bengal provides an important case for testing this theory, given its long history of competitive local elections since 1978 and high levels of election violence. The dissertation employs a multi-method approach, combining novel quantitative data from 3,000 local electoral units with original violence data from the 2018 local elections and 60 qualitative interviews with political elites and non-elites.
The findings show that incumbents employ violence even in strongholds, using targeted attacks to prevent opposition candidates from filing nominations. Violence is organized collaboratively through local strongmen and party workers, who play distinct roles in strongholds and competitive areas. The results indicate that violence is systematically used to undermine bottom-up challenges to power, reinforcing provincial incumbents’ dominance. Local elections thus become tools for consolidating control and sustaining subnational authoritarian practices while maintaining the appearance of electoral competition.