Social Institutions and Repression: Evidence from Argentina's Dirty War

• In Event: The Interaction of Repression and Resistance in Authoritarian Regimes

Abstract

Social institutions such as civic groups, ethnic associations, and religious organizations, may collaborate with or oppose authoritarian regimes. Yet little attention has been paid to how these institutions interact with a regime's efforts to repress threats from below. This paper develops an explanation for how the ideological leanings of locally embedded and politically credible social institutions constrain or enable a regime's ability to repress. Leaders of these institutions opposed to the regime air the "dirty laundry'' about repression to domestic and international civil society organizations, decreasing repression under these leaders' watch. Pro-regime leaders aid repression by passing on information about dissidents to security forces, increasing repression. Using original archival data on the political preferences of Catholic bishops, the argument is tested in Argentina during its last military dictatorship from 1976-1983. Bishops' preferences are plausibly exogenous to regime politics and other predictors of repression.

Author

• Pearce Edwards, Carnegie Mellon University