Education, Disinformation and Electoral Violence : A Quantitative Study on the Association between Education and Violent Elections

Abstract: The institutional, electoral and ethnic factors contributing to electoral violence have well been documented through both quantitative and qualitative research, while the mobilization process for electoral violence has been examined qualitatively. This study aims to contribute to quantitative research on factors that explain why citizens turn into perpetrators of electoral violence by examining how education can contribute to a decrease in electoral violence through the question: How does the level of education influence the occurrence of electoral violence? Given the presence of disinformation about elections during the electoral cycle, this research asserts that education contributes to a decrease in electoral violence by decreasing the acceptance of disinformation about elections. The hypothesis is tested through a large-N study on sub-national data of elections organized between 2004 and 2012 worldwide. The study’s results identify no support for the hypothesized association between education and election violence.