How citizens attribute blame for electoral violence: regional differences and party identification in Turkey

ABSTRACT

Recent work on elections in unconsolidated democracies and electoral authoritarian states has identified violence a problem that commonly afflicts electoral processes. Yet there is still little understanding of citizen reactions to violent acts and how voters attribute blame for attacks, intimidation, forceful obstruction of campaign activities and other violations of electoral peace. This paper aims to add to the growing micro-level literature on the dynamics of electoral violence by providing evidence of factors that shape regional heterogeneity in reactions to this phenomenon. Taking as our frame of reference the 2018 Turkish presidential elections, we probe the role of party identification and region of residence in conditioning blame attribution, separately and in combination. We find that the process of blame attribution is shaped by party identification, but that this effect is highly dependent on the regional context.

KEYWORDS:

• Electoral violence
• Media
• Content Analysis
• Turkey

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Identification with a minor party or no party is the reference category in these models.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Emre Toros

Emre Toros is a professor of political science at the Faculty of Communication, Hacettepe University, Ankara Turkey.

Sarah Birch is a professor of political science in the Department of Political Economy at King’s College London.