Riot Rewards? Study of BJP's Electoral Performance and Hindu Muslim Riots

Rohit Ticku

IHEID Working Papers from Economics Section, The Graduate Institute of International Studies

Abstract: Do incidents of ethnic polarization influence voter behavior? I address this question through the case study of India, the world’s largest functional democracy. Specifically, I test whether prior events of Hindu-Muslim riots electorally benefit Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP), a prominent Hindu nationalist party? The paper contributes to the literature by being the first to establish a causal relationship between Hindu-Muslim riots and BJP’s electoral performance. Results show that riots have a positive and significant effect on BJP’s vote share and are robust to our instrumentation strategy. The party vote share increases between 2.9 to 4.4 percent in response to different riot outcomes. Results seem to back the theory of electoral incentives i.e. parties representing elites among ethnic groups may have an incentive to instigate ethnic conflict to influence the marginal voter.

Keywords: Ethnic conflict; Hindu Muslim riots; Electoral performance; Voter behavior; Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP). (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 D74 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 38 pages
Date: 2015-09-30
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm and nep-pol
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gii:giihei:heidwp19-2015

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