Government Repression’s Differential Effect on Ethnonationalist Mobilization

• In Event: Repression and Dissent Revisited

Abstract

Is the repressive environment a hard-to-assimilate ethnic group faces determinant of its ability or inclination to mobilize in costly action? Do ethnic groups mobilize for self-determination and political autonomy at different levels in face of different government repressions? Do a government’s repressive tactics, especially violent repression, actually incite separatist, large-scale political mobilization rather than quelling it? This study finds that government repression is a major predictor of large-scale political mobilization by ethnic minorities with nationalist aspirations, but different repressions lead to different mobilizational outcomes. For the case of the Kurds in Iraq, Iran, Syria, and Turkey from 1917 to 2013, this paper finds a near-causal relationship between the type of repression a government deploys against the Kurdish community and future Kurdish political mobilization. In particular, violent repression incites large-scale political movements by 23% in the next year while government-imposed political exclusion—including exiling political leaders or banning parties and their publications—hinders future mobilization by 17% in the next year. Though this study focuses on the Kurds, the empirical approach of this paper—analyzing cross-national time-series data on repression and mobilization at the year level—lends itself to feasible replication across all cases of government vs. ethnic group cycles of repression and mobilization.

Author

• Ashley Fabrizio, Stanford University