Author Meets Critics: Elizabeth Nugent’s “After Repression”

Session Submission Type: Author meet critics

Session Description

How does repression affect political behavior, and through which psychological mechanisms? In After Repression: How Polarization Derails Democratic Transitions (Princeton University Press, 2020), Elizabeth R. Nugent explores how polarization among elite actors occurs under authoritarianism as well as the profound consequences of polarization for successful democratic consolidation during transitions. The book introduces an original two-stage theory. First, repression influences how opposition actors come to identify themselves politically. Second, identities jointly created through these mechanisms shape the landscape of affective bonds and articulated preferences among actors through well-established processes of preference formation. The nature of repression determines whether it has exacerbating or ameliorating effect; widespread repression creates bridging political identities and decreases polarization across the opposition, while targeted repression increases in-group identification for repressed groups and increases polarization. After Repression tests the argument through in-depth case studies of repression and polarization among the opposition in Egypt and Tunisia prior the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings and how this conditioned behavior during the transitions, a brief discussion of similar dynamics in Indonesia and Algeria, and lab experimental evidence supporting the psychological mechanism through which repression shapes political identities and polarization.
The panel will begin with a 10-minutes presentation by Nugent of a paper from the next step in her research agenda on the psychology of repression and political behavior. In “A Dream Deferred: The Behavior of Political Activists after Defeated Revolution,” Nugent turns towards from the politicians charged with navigating the aftermath of the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings to the activists who carried out the protests. With the exception of Tunisia, the majority of Middle Eastern countries witnessing massive protests have experienced a retrenchment of authoritarianism rather than democratization. The broader project seeks to document how activists experience revolution and its aftermath, conceptualize political hope and disappointment, and explore how politically relevant emotions relate to mobilizational continuation and innovation by activists in exile. The project contributes to knowledge by exploring the dynamics of defeated revolution, a topic neglected in the study of contested politics, and humanizing the experience of political change in documenting activists’ life trajectories of activists and first-hand accounts. “A Dream Deferred” is the first paper in the larger ongoing project. First, it outlines the theory and the emotional mechanisms through which repression affects political behavior. Next, the paper presents the results of a nationally representative survey administered to 2,000 Egyptian adult citizens in December 2018. The instrument included questions about political preferences and behaviors, emotions, demographics. Embedded towards the end of the survey was an experiment priming feelings of disappointment after the 2011 revolution. The results demonstrate two interesting findings that motivate the project and justify its focus on activists as differently affected by the revolution than the regular population. First, priming disappointment led respondents to report less willingness to politically mobilize when analyzed the survey population as a whole. However, when isolating activists – in this sample, those who reported demonstrating during the 2011 and other political protests – the results demonstrate a different relationship; priming disappointment led to increased willingness to politically mobilize. While regular Egyptians were demobilized by the disappointment of the 2011 uprising, activists remain mobilized.
After the presentation, critics will discuss the broader research agenda, combining feedback on both the paper as well as After Repression. Melani Cammett, Anna Gryzmala-Busse, and Daniel Slater have graciously agreed to comment.
The work discussed on this panel speak to the “Democracy, Difference, and Destabilization” theme of APSA 2020 in a number of ways. The book seeks to understand how polarization undermines democracy, a topic of current relevance not only for the Middle East but also for countries around the global. The paper explores how political activists are changed but continue to be galvanized in response to democratic threats, here in the form of authoritarian retrenchment following the countless possibilities of revolution, and how regular citizens may be threatened or scared into submitting to illiberal tactics and practices.

Sub Unit

• Theme Panel

Chair

• Melani Cammett Harvard University

Presenters

• Elizabeth R. Nugent Yale University

• Anna M. Grzymala-Busse Stanford University

• Dan Slater University of Michigan