Under the Gun: Political Parties and Violence in Pakistan
[Thesis]
Niloufer Aamina Siddiqui
Wilkinson, Steven I.
Yale University
2017
302
Place of publication: United States, Ann Arbor; ISBN=978-0-355-02816-4
Ph.D.
Yale University
2017
Political parties are an integral component of democratic systems. Yet, parties frequently engage in violent behavior. They employ violence directly, when their activists and cadres seek out political opponents and target the supporters of rival parties. They outsource violent tasks to urban gangs and ethnic militias who do their violent bidding in exchange for access to state resources and protection from state punishment. And they form alliances with local patrons, who maintain local vote banks through the control of micro-level clientelistic structures and often, through coercion and intimidation. Why would political parties ever employ violence? What explains variation in the strategies of violence employed by political parties? My dissertation explores these questions in the context of Pakistan, where assassinations, suicide attacks, and violent riots are endemic to political life. Its central claim is that the internal organization of a party determines its capacity for violence while the nature of its linkage with voters determines its incentives for violence. The particular combination of these attributes, in turn, regulates the type of violence which political parties are most likely to employ. Specifically, I explain variation in violence by examining: 1) the presence of the party at the local level; and 2) the party's linkages with voters (and whether these are primarily clientelistic in nature, or formed on the basis of an ideological or ascriptive factor such as ethnicity).
Political science; South Asian Studies
Social sciences;Elections;Ethnicity;Pakistan;Political Parties;South Asia;Violence