From ballots to bullets: an empirical assessment of how national elections influence state uses of political repression

This paper explores the complex relationship between national elections and repression (specifically instances of censorship and political restrictions). I do this while controlling for different contextual effects (various system types), different units of analysis (yearly as well as monthly data), and different types of relationships (lagged as well as immediate). Results indicate that within the yearly aggregated data (N = 1715), elections are only statistically significant in non-democracies, where they effect repressive behavior immediately as well as negatively. Monthly aggregated data (N = 5460), investigating only full democracies, did not reveal any significant relationships between national elections and repression. The degree/level of suffrage restrictions does have an effect however. I conclude with numerous suggestions for future research.