World News

Election violence | Divided America

Posted by: The Conversation Global

Date: Tuesday, 18 February 2020

 

Editor's note

Zambia’s first multiparty elections in 1991 were largely peaceful, while Kenya’s in the following year were marred by large-scale state-instigated electoral violence. Why are some countries prone to experiencing electoral violence, while others remain peaceful during their polls? Johan Brosché, Hanne Fjelde and Kristine Höglund explain how history plays a role.  

You hear it every day: America has never been so divided. Political polarisation is at a peak. Historian Gary W. Gallagher of the University of Virginia, a scholar of the Civil War, says that’s just not so.

Julius Maina

Regional Editor East Africa

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Supporters of Zambia’s president-elect Edgar Lungu in 2016. The country is known for peaceful polls, but this one was marked by clashes. Dawood Salim/AFP via Getty Images

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Political legacies generated during authoritarian rule have a tendency to transcend into the multiparty era.

Union dead at Gettysburg, July 1863. National Archives, Timothy H. O'Sullivan photographer

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A growing chorus of people say the US has never been so politically divided. A Civil War historian reminds readers that there was once a far more divided time.

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