Violent-Victors Theory of Political Behavior after War

This chapter presents the theory of how war outcomes influence electoral performance through party strategies and voter behavior. It outlines how war-winning, and war-losing parties devise their respective programs and platforms, reckon with the violent past, build and target their constituencies, and retain and recruit or expel members of their elites. It also delineates how voters emerging from war evaluate parties' competencies and formulate their political attitudes and behavior. The chapter details how the outcome of the war shapes how parties reckon with the ghosts from their past, script their programs, construct their constituencies, select their candidates, and propagate their messages to own the salient security issue and garner votes after large-scale violence in war. It shows how the strategies of parties and voters emerging from civil war produce a generalizable pattern of votes for belligerent successor parties with significant implications for peace, democracy, justice, and governance.