During highly uncertain, post-conflict elections, police officers and youth-wing party activists often engage in low-intensity electoral violence, which cannot be readily explained by national-level, institutional, elite-level strategic incentives for violence. Responding to calls to examine ‘non-strategic’ election violence, this article examines both the key actors most likely to perpetrate violence on-the-ground, and the micro-level perceptions underlying their decisions. In post-conflict contexts, police and youth-wing party activists operate within uncertain, information-poor and weakly institutionalized settings. Consequently, their pre-existing attitudes towards the use of violence, democracy, electoral institutions and towards other political actors influence how and when they engage in electoral violence. We proposed two different paths for reducing this uncertainty and improving attitudes: a) civic engagement programs and b) experience with ‘crucial’ elections, which we defined as the first post-conflict election following the withdrawal of external guarantors of electoral security. We employed a unique, locally led field experiment and panel data collected during the 2017 Liberian election to demonstrate how a ‘crucial election’ improved attitudes of both police and youth activists, while civic engagement programming did not. The findings suggested that elections following major structural reforms may reinforce democratization by improving the attitudes of the actors most likely to participate in violence.

中文翻译：

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民主转型期间预防选举暴力：利比里亚青年和警察的实地实验

在高度不确定的冲突后选举中，警察和青年派政党积极分子经常参与低强度的选举暴力，这无法用国家层面、机构层面、精英层面的暴力战略激励来解释。为了响应审查“非战略性”选举暴力的呼吁，本文研究了最有可能在实地实施暴力的关键行为者，以及他们决策背后的微观层面的看法。在冲突后背景下，警察和青年派政党积极分子在不确定、信息匮乏和制度化薄弱的环境中开展行动。因此，他们对使用暴力、民主、选举机构和其他政治行为体的原有态度影响着他们参与选举暴力的方式和时间。我们提出了两种不同的途径来减少这种不确定性并改善态度：a）公民参与计划和b）“关键”选举的经验，我们将其定义为选举安全外部担保人撤回后的第一次冲突后选举。我们采用了一项独特的、当地主导的实地实验和 2017 年利比里亚选举期间收集的小组数据来展示“关键选举”如何改善了警察和青年活动人士的态度，而公民参与计划却没有。研究结果表明，重大结构性改革之后的选举可以通过改善最有可能参与暴力的行为者的态度来加强民主化。