The continuum of election violence: Gendered candidate experiences in the Maldives

Elin Bjarnegård

doi:10.1177/0192512120977111

Abstract

Research on election violence often does not capture its psychological and gendered dimensions. Gender differences on the continuum of violence, as acknowledged in other fields, are applied here to election violence. Specifically, this article explores ways to unveil the forms of election violence that are hidden from the view of an external observer because they are either not carried out in public or not recognized as violence. Survey data and interview material was collected from men and women political candidates participating in the 2014 national elections in the Maldives. The study concludes that the continuum of violence is relevant for adequately assessing the full range of illegitimate acts used against men and women candidates to affect electoral races. Women candidates in the Maldives were more exposed than men candidates to threats and to verbal and figurative sexualized aggression.

Highlights

Research on election violence often does not capture its psychological and gendered dimensions
By acknowledging gendered patterns that have been long established in research on violence outside of the electoral sphere, the purpose of this work is to examine whether and how such patterns can be discerned in election violence
The empirical focus is on political candidates participating in the 2014 national elections in the Maldives

Summary

Introduction

Research on election violence often does not capture its psychological and gendered dimensions. The study concludes that the continuum of violence is relevant for adequately assessing the full range of illegitimate acts used against men and women candidates to affect electoral races. This article investigates the gender dimensions of psychological forms of violence targeting political candidates in electoral races. This article focuses on often overlooked psychological forms of violence in order to develop a research strategy that captures the full continuum of violence employed to illegitimately affect elections. Research on election violence has primarily captured violence recorded by journalists and news sources, police and hospital records, or election observers This reliance on secondary sources documenting publicly observable physical incidents may have created a bias in measurements of election violence, underestimating the forms of election violence experienced by women. Few attempts have been made to systematically compare women and men’s experiences of violence in elections, or to conceptualize such forms of violence along a continuum of violence that explicitly includes psychological forms of violence.

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Conclusion