Do regional parties overlook violence in exchange for political support?

The study looked at constituency-level assembly election data between 1988 and 2011 and events of political violence between 1989 and 2015

The election of a candidate from a regional party leads to a 7.2 percentage point rise in the level of violence in his or her home constituency, according to a new study.

Violent events rise by 9.9% and violent deaths by 13.4% when a regional party comes to power, says our analysis. We, associate professors of economics, studied the relationship between the election of a regional-party representative and political violence. We defined regional parties as those that are officially recognised by the Election Commission of India as "state parties" and have experienced electoral success in a geographically concentrated area.

There