How Repression Conditions Popular Struggle and the Onset of Mass Movements

• In Event: Strategies of Repression and Resistance in Autocratic Regimes

Abstract

How does the pattern of government repression condition the type of opposition group that emerges to wage political struggle? Conventional wisdom suggests that popular uprisings against repressive regimes are more likely to be violent than nonviolent, and that if a peaceful struggle emerges in such a difficult environment, it will be quickly put down or morph into an armed struggle. Recent scholarship has challenged this assumption, showing that nonviolent movements emerge and even succeed in repressive environments. Using cross-national and new subnational time-series data from Africa and Latin America that disaggregates both repression and dissent, we show that very high levels of lagged/preventive repression select out mass nonviolent movements. Under highly repressive conditions both nonviolent and armed movements will remain small and underground, and self-censorship will increase. We also find that repression informs the emergence or non-emergence of nonviolent movements much more than that of armed insurgencies. This is because there is less variation in levels of repression in response to armed dissent than there is in response to nonviolent action. These findings illuminate the selection process of dissent, showing that nonviolent and armed movements tend to emerge under different conditions.

Authors

• Consuelo Amat, Johns Hopkins University

• Alia Braley, University of California, Berkeley