Domains of Dominance: Opposition Strongholds and Political Violence in Postwar Abidjan

Abstract

Why do some city district experience more severe postwar violence than others? Existing research on postwar violence in urban areas proposes that strongholds are particularly violence prone. Nevertheless, existing research often overlooks the spatial character of postwar violence. We view postwar violence in cities as part of a struggle for political territorial control, where political actors seek to influence and control political dynamics within spatially delimited districts. Hence, while we also expect postwar violence to be more severe in opposition strongholds that threaten the postwar regime’s hold on power, we argue that violence will concentrate in territorial rather than electoral strongholds. We assess our argument in postwar Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, and draw on unique georeferenced event data to examine patterns of violence across territorial and electoral opposition strongholds. The findings indicate a strong relationship between opposition strongholds and postwar violence, but only when strongholds are understood in spatial rather than political terms: opposition territorial control both subsumed and incentivized violence, whereas opposition electoral strength permitted nonviolent forms of contestation and violence prevention. The study highlights the close connection between space and postwar violence, and underscores the need for more spatial conceptualizations of strongholds in studies of political violence.