The Interaction of Repression and Resistance in Authoritarian Regimes

Session Submission Type: Full Paper Panel

Session Description

How do authoritarian regimes repress popular opposition to their rule? This panel considers the interaction of the (1) problems regimes face when attempting to repress with (2) different institutional solutions to those problems and (3) the threat of the opposition's resistance. One class of problems is information, both about dissidents who organize against the regime and repression itself. Regimes attempt to gather information on the activities and locations of dissidents, but find them to be well-organized, strategic, and able to avoid detection. A related problem is information about repression itself. Regimes attempt to conceal the nature and extent of repression from an outside audience, hoping to present coercive violence as justified. Yet social institutions can reveal this information and undermine the regime's credibility. A second class of problems is compliance: the regime must develop strategies to keep the domestic opposition quiescent. Through indiscriminate repression, a regime may increase the compliance of potential dissidents by motivating them to demonstrate their loyalty. Enlistment in the armed forces provides an institutional means to signal loyalty. Through manipulation of legislative processes, a regime may increase compliance of the domestic opposition by thwarting their ability to defeat regime policies. However, modifying certain institutional rules can also backfire if the opposition believes it is disadvantaged by the rule. All four papers in this panel highlight the tensions in the relationship between authoritarian regimes and their domestic opposition, considering new theoretical pathways by which those tensions are exacerbated or resolved. The papers consider a variety of cases, including China, Argentina, and the Soviet Union, and use a variety of methods both formal and empirical to draw inferences and insight from those cases.

Sub Unit

• Division 11: Comparative Politics

Individual Presentations

• Social Institutions and Repression: Evidence from Argentina's Dirty War - Pearce Edwards, Carnegie Mellon University

• State Repression and War-Making: Raising an Army of Dissidents - Roya Talibova, University of Michigan

• Legislative Rules and Opposition Boycott in Autocracies - Ae sil Woo, Gettysburg College

Chair

• Jennifer Gandhi Emory University

Discussant

• Travis B. Curtice Drexel University