Fear to Vote: Explosions, Salience, and Elections

Juan Vargas, Miguel Purroy, Felipe Coy (), Sergio Perilla () and Mounu Prem
Additional contact information
Felipe Coy: Princeton University
Sergio Perilla: Department of Economics, Universidad del Rosario

No 398, HiCN Working Papers from Households in Conflict Network

Abstract: Criminal groups use violence strategically to manipulate the behavior of victims and bystanders. At the same time, violence is a stimulus that causes fear, which also shapes people’s reactions. Taking advantage of the randomness in the timing of antipersonnell and mine accidents in Colombia, as well as their coordinates relative to those of voting polls, we identify the effect of violence-induced fear (independent from intentions) on electoral behavior. Fortuitous landmine explosions reduce political participation. We further disentangle whether the type of fear caused by landmine explosions responds to an information channel (whereby people learn about the risk of future victimization) or by the salience of the explosion (which causes individuals to make impulsive decisions, driven by survival considerations), and show evidence in favor of the latter. While the turnout reduction takes place across the ideological spectrum, we document that the explosions induce a shift in the political preferences of individuals who do vote. These findings point to worrisome potential consequences for the consolidation of democracies in places affected by conflict.

Keywords: Conflict; fear; Landmine explosions; salience; voting (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 D74 P48 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 93
Date: 2023-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm, nep-dev and nep-pol
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://hicn.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/HiCN-WP-398.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Fear to Vote: Explosions, Salience, and Elections (2024)
Working Paper: Fear to Vote Explosions, Salience, and Elections (2023)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hic:wpaper:398

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in HiCN Working Papers from Households in Conflict Network
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Tilman Brück () and () and () and ().