Surveillance and Dissuasion as Methods of Preventive Repression

• In Event: State Repression and Human Rights I

Abstract

The rapid improvement of technologies by which governments can observe and even anticipate who may engage in acts of opposition against them conjures visions of a dystopian future. Imagine that a government is able to get from all citizens polygenic scores indicating their propensity to engage in acts of opposition. We are not there yet but the technology for observing who does what, who says what, who meets who is developing rapidly. Identifying potential opponents, however, is only the first step in preventing overt acts of opposition. Having observed the potential dangers presented by some individuals or groups, the governments must either physically prevent or dissuade them from acting. Preventive repression entails two steps: surveillance and dissuasion. Moreover, because both are costly, governments face a budgetary trade-off between surveillance and dissuasion. In this paper, we develop a novel theory to generate a realistic assessment of the effectiveness of preventive repression by taking into account the limits to effective surveillance and the limits to effective dissuasion due to their economic and political costs.

Author

• Tiberiu C. Dragu, New York University