Outsourcing Repression

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

Abstract

While a large body of research investigates the circumstances that lead governments to repress their citizens, violence perpetrated by citizens against other citizens remains underexplored by political scientists. Governments vary (cross-sectionally and temporally) in the degree to which they permit or even sanction this type of violence. In this paper, we begin to explore this phenomenon asking when do leaders allow citizens to engage in violence against other citizens in lieu of government repression? We argue that that leaders allow and encourage private repression—violence against one group of citizens by other groups of citizens—when the costs of government repression are high. We plan to test our expectations about private repression by investigating the development and effect of racial equality legislation on lynching in the United States from 1883 to 1941.

Authors

• Courtenay R. Conrad, University of California, Merced

• Emily Hencken Ritter, Vanderbilt University

• Jessica Luce Trounstine, University of California, Merced