The geography of regime support and political violence

In this article, we investigate how the political geography of local power and national-subnational alignment influences distribution conflict between election contests. We ask consistently intermediaries, such as members parliament (MPs), can sustain their own support that successful national candidate. The best measure for ability elites to generate keep is candidate vote margins. These results recast areas core, swing or costly regime investments, which in turn streams patronage authority cycles. Based on geographies result from subnational data 13 African countries, find core where leader high, there limited violence by state forces; significantly higher leader; non-state armed actors (e.g. militias) most likely occur winning margin last legislative narrow It these regions competing engage replace poorly performing intermediaries.