Event Type, Sub-state Actor and Temporal Dimensions of the Dissent-Repression Relationship: Evidence from the Middle East (original) (raw)

The Effect of Repression on Protest

ch10 Contentious episodes in the age of austerity. Studying the dynamics of government-challenger interactions. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2021

In this chapter, we investigate how government repression affected challengers' protest mobilization. While most of the challengers' actions were peaceful, and violence basically non-existent, governments adopted some degree of repressive measures across all countries. Repression however, did not significantly alter the repertoire of actions which tended to remain moderate without showing any form of radicalization throughout the episodes. The only change in the forms of action due to repression concerned radical actions that were slightly reduced due to repression. This was especially apparent for Greece, where repression decreased the likelihood of confrontational actions, i.e. occupations by trade unions. The effect of repression changed across types of challengers and across specific dimensions of the context, too. Repression mainly affected institutional actors such as political parties whose participation in protests significantly decreased. In addition, repression had a stronger dampening effect on conventional actions under right-wing governments. Finally, repression dampened protests when no international actors intervened in domestic politics.

Protest and Repression: How do Protest Objectives Impact the Likelihood of Repression?

2021

What is the likelihood of repression when the primary goal of the protesters is regime change? This article seeks to fill a gap in the protestrepression literature by exploring the likelihood of repression depending on the goals of the protesters. It has been discovered that autocratic leaders are more likely to use repression as a response to protest than democratic leaders. Beyond regime type, it is theorized that leaders are more likely to repress protesters when their power is under threat. It is argued that the stronger the threat, the more likely repression will occur due to fear of substantially decreasing or losing power. A goal of overthrowing the state or causing a drastic shift in a state’s balance of power is accepted as being a more intense threat than other protest objectives. This argument poses that this heightened threat to state power proposed by protesters will increase the likelihood of repression. Using yearly data on 250 nonviolent and violent campaigns collect...

Variety of groups and protests in repressive contexts1

Routledge eBooks, 2022

This article examines the role of various social groups in shaping protests in repressive contexts. The empirical study focuses on the Egyptian uprisings that started in January 2011. The authors use data collected through semi-structured interviews undertaken between 2011 and 2015 with 58 individuals who had all participated in such protests and who were members of various types of organizations. The results show that, in contrast to the arguments highlighting the spontaneous, internet-based nature of the protests that occurred in 2011 in the MENA region, individuals' membership in organizations such as the Muslim Brotherhood, and in more informal groups such as Popular Committees or independent trade unions have been crucial for their engagement in protests. The findings also highlight the flexible and dynamic form of organizations active in repressive contexts, which are capable of reacting and adapting easily to a changing context.

Repression and dissent: Substitution, context, and timing

American Journal of Political Science, 1998

Theory: Two expected utility theories and one psychological/resource mobilization theory of the impact of repression on dissent are tested in this study. Hypotheses: Lichbach (1987) hypothesizes that dissidents will substitute violent protest for nonviolent protest behavior (and vice versa) when confronted with repression. Gupta, Singh, and Sprague (1993) put forth a contextual argument: repression spurs violence in democracies, but high levels of repression are effective in authoritarian regimes. Rasler ( 1996) contends that timing matters: repression is effective in the short run, but spurs protest in the long run.

Dynamics of Political Protests

International Organization, 2018

The links between protests and state responses have taken on increased visibility in light of the Arab Spring movements. But we still have unanswered questions about the relationship between protest behaviors and responses by the state. We frame this in terms of concession and disruption costs. Costs are typically defined as government behaviors that impede dissidents’ capacity for collective action. We change this causal arrow and hypothesize how dissidents can generate costs that structure the government's response to a protest. By disaggregating costs along dimensions of concession and disruption we extend our understanding of protest behaviors and the conditions under which they are more (or less) effective. Utilizing a new cross-national protest-event data set, we test our theoretical expectations against protests from 1990 to 2014 and find that when protesters generate high concession costs, the state responds in a coercive manner. Conversely, high disruption costs encoura...

When Does Repression Trigger Mass Protest? The 2013 Gezi Protests

This chapter offers a mechanism-based explanation of how single-cause oriented protest events are transformed into a mass movement where previously fragmented causes of contention come to be expressed in conjoint action. Drawing on the case of 2013 Gezi protests in Turkey, we map the protest waves and identify two mechanisms that mediate the influence of repression on mobilization of dissent. The first mechanism is the perceived nature of the cause of contention. Repression leads to scale shift (McAdam et al., 2008) in the first wave when exercised over those who protest for an issue perceived to be innocent. The second mechanism is the experience of repression. Boundary deactivation among protesters and the resulting continuity in protest activity follow scale shift in the second and third waves as experience of repression transforms perceptions of those that were previously framed as others. Our analysis relies on data collected via participant observation, in-depth interviews, and an online survey with 1,352 protesters.

Ortiz, David G. 2013. “Rocks, Bottles and Weak Autocracies: The Role of Political Regime Settings on Contention-Repression Interactions.” Mobilization 18(3):289-312

Scholars have recently begun to explore more nuanced ways of looking at the links between protest and repression, including consideration of the regime and other structural impacts on this dynamic relationship. This work contributes to this growing literature by employing Cox proportional hazards models to analyze daily data from 98 countries to study the exchanges between violent and nonviolent contention and repression under different regime settings. Results highlight the importance of considering the political setting when examining the dynamic contention-repression interaction, the need to account for both contentious actions' effects on state repression and state repression's effects on contention, and the fact that regime type categories should be further disaggregated in order to fully capture the particularities of this complex relationship.

Dissent and Repression: Substitution Effects in Violent Political Conflict Behavior

Department of Political Science, The Florida State …, 1998

Theory: Two expected utility theories and one psychological/resource mobilization theory of the impact of repression on dissent are tested in this study. Hypotheses: Lichbach (1987) hypothesizes that dissidents will substitute violent protest for nonviolent protest behavior (and vice versa) when confronted with repression. Gupta, Singh, and Sprague (1993) put forth a contextual argument: repression spurs violence in democracies, but high levels of repression are effective in authoritarian regimes. Rasler ( 1996) contends that timing matters: repression is effective in the short run, but spurs protest in the long run.