2 - The Logic of Party Violence

Summary

Chapter 2 presents my theory of party violence in more detail. I explain why parties choose to engage in violence despite its costs, which parties are most likely to do so, and the strategies of violence they employ. I focus on two types of political landscapes of weak state capacity – landscapes of shared sovereignty and landscapes of multiple competing sovereigns – where parties face differing incentives for violence. I explain that the extent to which voters impose costs on parties depends on whether the party has a captive support base. Assuming a party does engage in violence, the party’s organizational structure is key to whether it will do so directly through its own party members or whether it will outsource the task to a street-level violence specialist. I also highlight a third way in which parties engage in violence: through electoral alliances with elite violence specialists. Each of these strategies of violence has different predictions for the nature and level of the violence that follows. This chapter also explains the origins of these key variables and argues that they are exogenous to party strategy.