This introduction presents an overview of key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book advances a new conceptual and theoretical framework useful for understanding the risks of contentious elections. It focuses on issues of how far contentious elections dampen turnout. The book also investigates how far contentious elections trigger electoral protest. It further explores the conditions under which contentious elections generate leadership overthrow and the focuses upon how far contentious contests trigger electoral violence in a comparison of states in Sub-Saharan Africa. The growing use of referendums to either build peace or else to perpetuate conflict by changing state structures is then examined: territory, citizenship, center-periphery relations. Finally, the book summarizes the key findings from the book and then considers new evidence for several macro-level conditions which are also regarded as important for this phenomenon.