ELECTIONS, VIOLENCE, and PARTIES (EVaP)

Research project led by Ursula Daxecker (PI), funded by ERC grant Starting Grant #852439  (€1,5 million), 2020-2026
Core project team: Noyonika Das (PhD student, now lecturer), Maureen Fubara (PhD student), Neeraj Prasad (research fellow, now assistant professor) 
Affiliate team members:  Megan Turnbull (visiting professor), Hennes-Michel Barnehl (research assistant), Shahane de Silva (research assistant), Anvita Pant (research assistant), Aryabin Hassan (research assistant), Titas Ganguly (research assistant), Aamir Raza (research assistant), Pawas Pratakshit (predoctoral fellow).

Countries around the world now hold elections, but are often unable or unwilling to guarantee free, fair and peaceful elections. Violence regularly precedes, accompanies, or succeeds elections, undermining democracy and people’s trust in electoral processes. While scholars and practitioners have made important progress in identifying the conditions that make elections violent, we do not have a good understanding of how violence plays out on the ground: Who engages in violence, who is targeted with violence, and when and where is violence most common?

To answer these questions, the Elections, Violence, and Parties (EVaP) project presents new theory and evidence on the nature, organization, and consequences of electoral violence. We attribute a central role to political parties as important actors linking politicians and citizens.  The project examines the conditions under which party organizations themselves perpetrate violence, or when they jointly produce violence with other non-state actors such as ethnic leaders, religious organizations, gangs, or militias. We also explore how violence influences its targets — we ask if violence increases or decreases turnout, polarization, and ethnic attachment?  

The Election, Violence and Parties (EVaP) project uses a multi-method approach to examine within country variation in party institutions, social support, and election violence in India and Nigeria. Our portfolio of methods include surveys, experiments, elite and citizen interviews, and quantitative analysis. The project has developed primary data on violent events and conflicts linked to elections. This geo-coded dataset covers violence to intimidate voters, harrass the opposition, religious violence, land disputes, and other small-scale political violence. The project also collects data on elections for local, state, and national elections at the booth-level. These data sources allow us to create a micro-level record of violence, contentious politics, and elections. Moreover, the project has implemented surveys with embedded vignette and list experiments and along the routes of violent rallies to study the influence of violence on voter participation, electoral competition, turnout, and voting behavior. Project members conduct extensive fieldwork and interviews to examine the purpose of electoral violence and enunciate the processes of production of electoral violence. Finally, using secondary sources, such as local and national media reports, the projects uses content analysis to examine the joint production of violence, the axis of political contention, the construction of contention, and to connect actors to motives of violence.

Special issues

• Ruggeri, Andrea., Daxecker, Ursula., & Neeraj Prasad. (2025). Political Violence in Democracies. Special Issue in Journal of Peace Research. 62(5). 

Publications (peer-reviewed)

• Daxecker, Ursula., & Neeraj Prasad. (2025). Preaching to the Converted: Misinformation and Voter Preferences in India. Forthcoming in Electoral Studies. 
• Ruggeri, Andrea., Daxecker, Ursula., & Neeraj Prasad. (2025). Political Violence in Democracies: An Introduction.  Journal of Peace Research 62(5).
• Das, Noyonika. (2025). Engineered Non-Contestation: Deterring Electoral Contestation using Violence in Local Elections.  Journal of Peace Research 62(5).
• Fubara, Maureen. (2025). Renting Political Violence: A Political Economy of Rents, Access and Violence Delegation.  Journal of Peace Research 62(5).
• Daxecker, Ursula., & Neeraj Prasad. (2025). Demanding Violence, Punishing Peace: Support for Party Violence in India. Forthcoming in The Journal of Politics.
• Daxecker, Ursula., Hanne Fjelde., & Neeraj Prasad. (2025). Misinformation, Narratives, and Intergroup Attitudes: Evidence from India.  Journal of Politics, 87(2), 757-773.
• Daxecker, Ursula., Deglow Anna., &  Hanne Fjelde., (2024). Voter Intimidation as a tool of Mobilization or Demobilization? Evidence from West Bengal, India. Journal of  Conflict Resolution, 0(0).   
• Bartels L., Ursula Daxecker, Susan Hyde, Staffan Lindberg, & Irfan Nooruddin. (2023). The Forum: Global Challenges to Democracy? Perspectives on Democratic Backsliding. International Studies Review, 25(2).
• Daxecker Ursula., & Mascha Rauschenbach. (2023). Election Type and the Logic of Pre-Election Violence: Evidence from Zimbabwe. Electoral  Studies, Volume 8.2. 
• H Zeynep Bulutgil, and Neeraj Prasad. (2023). Inequality, Elections, and Communal Riots in India.   Journal of Peace Research, 1-15.
•  Daxecker Ursula., & Hanne Fjelde. (2022). Electoral Violence, Partisan Identity, and Perceptions of Election Quality: A Survey Experiment in West Bengal, India.  Comparative Politics, 55(1), 47-69.  
• Borzyskowski Inken von, Ursula Daxecker , and Patrick Kuhn. (2021). Fear of Campaign Violence and Support for Democracy and Autocracy. Conflict Management and Peace Science Journal, 39 (5).  

Other Publications

• Ursula Daxecker, Neeraj Prasad, and Andrea Ruggeri. (2025).  Why Political Violence is on the Rise in the U.S. and Where it Might Lead. LSE US Politics Blog.
• Fubara Maureen. (2025). Thug Culture in Nigerian politics: The Links between State Governors, Funding and Violent Armed Groups. The Conversation.
• Daxecker, Ursula. (2024). Democracy and Peace: Can Democracy Solve the Problem of Political violence?. Inaugural speech delivered on June 14, 2024.
• Fubara M​aureen. (2023). Reconciling Changing Positionalities: Reflections from my Fieldwork in Nigeria.  Qualitative and Multi-Method Research, 21 (1), 20-23.

Working Papers

• Das, Noyonika. (2025). Locally Sourced: The Role of Local Actors in the Production of Incumbent Sponsored Violence. Dissertation Project. 
• Daxecker Ursula & Neeraj Prasad. (2025). The Logic of Party Violence. Book manuscript.
• Kris Ruijgrok, Daxecker Ursula, Ward Berenschot & Imke Harbers. (2025). Abstract Ideals, Concrete Realities: Political Elites and Support for Democracy in India. In Progress. 
• Fubara, Maureen. (2025). Rents and Electoral Violence Intensity: A Study of Nigeria. Dissertation Project. 
• Fubara Maureen, & Daxecker Ursula. (2025). Brokers, Rents, and Campaigns Strategies: Evidence from Nigeria. In Progress. 
• Prasad Neeraj, Ursula Daxecker., & Kartikeya Batra. (2025). Violence as Craft: How Violence shapes Voter Preferences. In Progress.  
• Ursula Daxecker. (2025).  Political Violence from the Bottom-Up: New Microlevel Data for India. In Progress.

Ethics Board
Members:  Johanna Söderström, Kingsley Madueke, & Rudabeh Shahid
​
For more about the EVaP project, please read this interview or email us.