Description:

Please join the Comparative Politics Workshop as they host Northwestern Political Science PhD student Ulaş Erdoğdu, presenting "Weapons of the Ordinary: Insurgency, Counterinsurgency and Voting Behavior"

The session will take place in Scott Hall 212 with an option for virtual attendance. Lunch will be served. 

Abstract: Political parties with links to violent groups are common in electoral regimes. Yet, we know little about how the subnational variation in insurgent violence affects the subnational variation in the vote share of insurgent associated political parties. By using the 2015 regular and snap elections in Turkey as a case study, in between which the Peace Process between the government and the insurgent PKK collapsed, I try to fill this gap. I show that clashes between insurgents and the state tend to take place in localities of high insurgent support. Second, I show that voters punish insurgent-associated political party for the violence disproportionately across localities. I argue that the identity and political orientation of civilians influence how they perceive violence and whom they blame for violence. That is civilians who reside in localities of violence are more likely to blame the government for violence rather than blaming the insurgents compared to civilians who reside in non-violent localities given that clashes between insurgents and the state tend to take place in localities of high insurgent support. Thus, I find a positive relationship between violence and the vote-share of insurgent-associated HDP despite a decrease in its vote share in almost every district in the aftermath of violence. Based on this paradoxical finding, I discuss conceptual and methodological challenges in studying the relationship between violence and voting behavior.