(No) Reason to Riot, (no) Reason to Repress? : Political Power-Sharing and Its Effect on Electoral Violence

What is the effect of political power-sharing on electoral violence? There has been no comprehensive examination of the effect of political power-sharing on electoral violence in peace and conflict literature. This lack of knowledge is particularly concerning, since political power-sharing is a commonly deployed tool to pacify polarised and divided societies, and only if it is well understood, policymakers can be sure that it will have its intended consequence. Drawing on literature covering the effects of political power-sharing and causes of electoral violence, this thesis develops causal mechanisms which point out potential links between the two phenomena, which are promptly tested using multinomial logistic regression on all countries between 1946 and 2016 that were non-consolidated democracies and experienced meaningful elections. The statistical analysis yielded broad support for the notion that political power-sharing reduces electoral violence. Additionally, an interaction between recent conflict and the relationship between political power-sharing and electoral violence was found, according to which the effect of power-sharing in post-conflict countries is less strong than in countries without conflict. These results open up space for future research, like a detailed assessment of the causal mechanisms at play.