This study presents new theory and evidence on the repertoire of electoral intimidation, suggesting that threats can be used to deter rival party supporters from voting but also to mobilize citizens to vote for a particular party. We expect these strategies to unfold in the same electoral context, but differ in targeting and incidence; while threats to demobilize are concentrated in closely contested areas and occur more frequently overall, threats to mobilize target fewer voters and are centered in parties’ own strongholds. Recognizing the difficulty of surveying citizens about sensitive experiences, we combine qualitative material from local news with evidence from a list experiment embedded in an original survey conducted after the 2019 elections in the Indian state of West Bengal. Our empirical findings corroborate our expectations: areas without overt violence may nevertheless be highly coercive, underlining the importance of studying the full repertoire of electoral violence.

中文翻译：

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选民恐吓是动员或复员的工具？来自印度西孟加拉邦的证据


这项研究提出了关于选举恐吓的新理论和证据，表明威胁可以用来阻止敌对政党的支持者投票，也可以动员公民投票给特定政党。我们预计这些策略将在相同的选举背景下展开，但在目标和发生率上有所不同;虽然动员的威胁集中在竞争激烈的地区，总体上发生的频率更高，但动员的威胁针对的选民较少，并且集中在政党自己的据点。认识到对公民进行敏感经历调查的困难，我们将来自当地新闻的定性材料与印度西孟加拉邦 2019 年选举后进行的原始调查中嵌入的列表实验的证据相结合。我们的实证研究结果证实了我们的预期：没有公开暴力的地区可能仍然具有高度的强制性，这凸显了研究选举暴力的全部内容的重要性。