Political Violence and Electoral Culture in West Bengal Since 1977
Author
Malay Khan
Abstract
This article examines the persistence and changing functions of political violence in West Bengal from the establishment of Left Front rule in 1977 through the Trinamool Congress (TMC) period to 2025. It asks why electoral violence persists despite partisan alternation and how coercion can reshape political competition beyond individual elections. Using a qualitative historical-comparative design, it draws on secondary scholarship, Election Commission and State Election Commission materials, government and human-rights reports, judicial records, election-monitoring evidence, and selected contemporary reporting. It proposes a Local Dominance Cycle, a mechanism-oriented framework linking control of local institutions, patronage, electoral stakes, coercive capacity, opposition demobilization or non-contestation, and renewed institutional control, and argues that violence can function not only as an outcome of electoral rivalry but also as a means of restructuring the competitive field. The 2018 and 2023 panchayat elections show contrasting patterns: severe non-contestation in 2018, and higher contestation combined with greater lethality and intra-party coercion in 2023. The 2021 post-election violence and the Sandeshkhali case are used to develop the concept of the democratic afterlife of violence: the persistence of displacement, weakened organization, material insecurity, and expectations of retaliation after immediate violence ends. The evidence is consistent with the proposed mechanisms but does not demonstrate each link of the cycle, since the cases are purposively selected and the data heterogeneous. The article concludes that partisan alternation does not by itself produce institutional transformation, because durable local control, patronage networks, and uneven enforcement can sustain coercive incentives across regimes, with implications for substantive democratic competition.
Keywords
West Bengal; Electoral Violence; Political Coercion; Local Dominance; Democratic Competition
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