Criminalized electoral politics in Brazilian urban peripheries

Criminal violence can be used to sustain and construct local political orders that undermine democratic processes. In this article, I conceptualize how criminal violence and clientelism are jointly used at local levels (e.g. neighborhoods, municipalities) to influence electoral outcomes in Brazilian urban peripheries. I call this criminalized electoral politics. With the help of two dimensions-the nature of the relationship between political and criminal actors, as well as the type of activity that provides a criminal group's primary source of income-I construct a descriptive typology that allows me to classify different forms of criminalized electoral politics prevalent in urban spaces. Throughout the text I use examples from the metropolitan area of Rio de Janeiro to illustrate cases of criminalized electoral politics. In this way, this article offers a conceptual foundation to understand how criminal violence can affect the electoral linkages between citizens and politicians and, therefore, the quality of democracy and forms of local order in developing countries.