In emerging democracies, elections are encouraged as a route to democratization. However, not only does violence often threaten these elections, but citizens often view as corrupt the security forces deployed to combat violence. We examine the effects of such security provision. In Afghanistan's 2010 parliamentary election, polling centers with similar histories of pre‐election violence unintentionally received different deployments of the Afghan National Police, enabling identification of police's effects on turnout. Using data from the universe of polling sites and various household surveys, data usually unavailable in conflict settings, we estimate increases in police presence decreased voter turnout by an average of 30%. Our results adjudicate between competing theoretical mechanisms through which security forces could affect turnout, and show behavior is not driven by voter anticipation of election‐day violence. This highlights a pitfall for building government legitimacy via elections in weakly institutionalized and conflict‐affected states.

中文翻译：

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破坏民主？阿富汗选举的安全保障和投票率†

在新兴的民主国家，鼓励选举作为通向民主化的途径。但是，暴力不仅经常威胁到这些选举，而且公民经常将为打击暴力而部署的安全部队视为腐败。我们研究了此类安全条款的效果。在2010年阿富汗的议会选举中，选举前暴力历史相似的投票中心无意间收到了阿富汗国家警察的不同部署，从而能够确定警察对投票率的影响。使用民意测验范围内的数据和各种家庭调查得出的数据，这些数据通常在冲突情况下不可用，我们估计警察人数的增加使选民投票率平均下降30％。我们的结果对安全部队可能影响投票率的相互竞争的理论机制进行了裁决，并表明行为不受选民对选举日暴力的预期的驱动。这凸显了在制度薄弱和受冲突影响较小的州中通过选举建立政府合法性的陷阱。