Legitimacy, Repression and Mobilization

Session Submission Type: Full Submitted Panel

Session Description

The degree to which protest movements from Cairo to Ferguson crystallised around issues of police brutality underscores the need for further research into the dynamics of repression and mobilization. Against this backdrop, the papers that make up this panel stand to serve as points of departure for fresh comparative research on the question of repression and policing by bringing together scholars working on both Western and non-Western contexts. In particular, the panel will seek to contribute to new debates on the effects of repression on different qualities of mass mobilization. This includes attention to how activists draw on experiences of repression to justify their continued participation in seemingly lost causes, and how repression can legitimize female participation in protest in otherwise highly patriarchal contexts.

At the same time, the panel also takes a longer view at the predictors of repression, by exploring the characteristics of protest events that make repression more or less likely. This includes considering how regimes justify massacres to domestic and international audiences, and the role repression plays in building alliances against anti-systemic challengers. It will also consider how justifications for repression change over time, leading repressive actors to adjust their coercive strategies.

Besides shedding light on the question of repression and policing by states broadly conceived, the papers which make up this panel will also make important contributions to our understanding of the dynamics of state violence and collective protest in the United States and the Middle East during a critical historical juncture.

Sub Unit

• DIVISION 12: COMPARATIVE POLITICS OF DEVELOPING COUNTRIES

Individual Presentations

• “Ultimately we're all losing”: Failure and Repression in an Activist Community - Heidi Reynolds-Stenson, University of Arizona

• Gender, Repression and Mobilization: Muslim Sisters and the Anti-Coup Movement - Sarah ElMasry, The American University in Cairo; Neil Ketchley, King's College London

• Massacres and Mobilization in Egypt 2011-2015 - Amy Austin Holmes, American University in Cairo

• State security maps, repression and popular challenge in the Syrian uprising - Kevin Mazur, Nuffield College

Chair

• Steven Brooke University of Louisville

Discussants

• Mark Beissinger Princeton University

• Michael Weaver University of Chicago