Militarized elections and citizens’ support for democratic rights: evidence from India

Across the world, many citizens go to the polls amidst armed threats from both state and non-state actors. How do militarized elections affect citizens’ willingness to accept restrictions on democratic rights? We argue that when forming opinions about appropriate limits to state powers, citizens navigate competing threats from state and non-state actors. The display of state coercive force should make citizens more protective of civil and political rights. Yet, if it occurs in the context of threat posed by non-state actors, citizens may become more likely to accept that rights are restricted. We embed a vignette experiment with a selective information prime in a 2019 post-election survey of 1,080 Indian citizens across two states affected by armed insurgency. We find that being primed on a heavy state-military presence makes citizens more reluctant to accept restrictions on civil and political rights, but the effect is only found among politically marginalized groups. In the presence of violent non-state threats, however, citizens become more likely to support policies that curtail democratic rights.