Election violence prevention during democratic transitions: A field experiment with youth and police in Liberia

Lindsey Pruett, Alex Dyzenhaus, Sabrina Karim and Dao Freeman
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Lindsey Pruett: Department of Political Science, Louisiana State University, Louisiana, USA
Alex Dyzenhaus: Department of Political Science, University of Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Sabrina Karim: Department of Government, Cornell University, New York, USA
Dao Freeman: Kofi Annan Institute for Conflict Transformation, University of Liberia, Monrovia, Liberia

Journal of Peace Research, 2025, vol. 62, issue 2, 262-277

Abstract: During highly uncertain, post-conflict elections, police officers and youth-wing party activists often engage in low-intensity electoral violence, which cannot be readily explained by national-level, institutional, elite-level strategic incentives for violence. Responding to calls to examine ‘non-strategic’ election violence, this article examines both the key actors most likely to perpetrate violence on-the-ground, and the micro-level perceptions underlying their decisions. In post-conflict contexts, police and youth-wing party activists operate within uncertain, information-poor and weakly institutionalized settings. Consequently, their pre-existing attitudes towards the use of violence, democracy, electoral institutions and towards other political actors influence how and when they engage in electoral violence. We proposed two different paths for reducing this uncertainty and improving attitudes: a) civic engagement programs and b) experience with ‘crucial’ elections, which we defined as the first post-conflict election following the withdrawal of external guarantors of electoral security. We employed a unique, locally led field experiment and panel data collected during the 2017 Liberian election to demonstrate how a ‘crucial election’ improved attitudes of both police and youth activists, while civic engagement programming did not. The findings suggested that elections following major structural reforms may reinforce democratization by improving the attitudes of the actors most likely to participate in violence.

Keywords: democratization; election violence; field experiment; Liberia; police reform; youth parties (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:joupea:v:62:y:2025:i:2:p:262-277

DOI: 10.1177/00223433231211770

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