The quality of governance peace : Governance perceptions and sustaining peace

Quality of Government (QoG) peace is a concept gaining some traction alongside more known concepts such as the democratic peace, or liberal (capitalist) peace or the globalist/modernist peace. This study aims to uncover how perceptions of governance quality uncover variation in the number of violent and nonviolent collective and interpersonal events at the sub-national level in Nepal. National survey data is used to operationalise the mechanisms for quality of governance perceptions which are then aggregated at District level. In-country elite level interviews were also completed in order to trace the process in the causal mechanism and control for reverse causality. Results point to a strong negative effect between perceptions of governance quality and the number of events occurring. There was not, however, any causal relationship established between perceptions of governance quality and the ratio of violent to non-violent events. Instead, interviewees related the resort to violence as coming about more strongly from a committed leadership of protest movements (or lack thereof) and moves by the State to instigate violence through repressive tactics against protest events