Strategies of Repression and Resistance in Autocratic Regimes

Session Submission Type: Full Paper Panel

Session Description

Autocratic states, and states moving towards autocracy, often deploy police or military violence against opponents. How do autocratic leaders strategically deploy repression in ways that reduce the risk of mass mobilization, yet solidify the allegiance of supporters? How do regime opponents mount effective resistance in variant repressive contexts? The four papers on this panel provide provocative answers to these questions. Jean Lachapelle shows how Abdul Fattah el-Sisi regime in Egypt used large-scale repression against Islamists to cultivate the support of non-Islamists. Dotan Haim notes that Philippine police eschewed neighborhoods with dense social and political ties, targeting socially isolated neighborhoods with a diminished capacity for resistance. Consuelo Amat finds that under conditions of extreme repression both nonviolent and armed movements tend to remain small and underground, but armed insurgencies are more likely to develop than nonviolent movements. Courtenay R. Conrad observes that one of the ways leaders have avoided the costs of state repression is by encouraging private repression—violence against one group of citizens by other groups of citizens—when and where the risk of backlash is high. Mark R. Beissinger is discussant.

Sub Unit

• Division 44: Democracy and Autocracy

Chair

• Cathy Lisa Schneider American University-SIS

Discussant

• Mark Beissinger Princeton University

Individual Presentations

• Rules of Repression: Military Rule, Coercion and Autocratic Survival - Jean Lachapelle, University of Oslo

• Civilian Social Networks and State Repression: Evidence from Philippine Drug War - Dotan A Haim, Florida State University

• How Repression Conditions Popular Struggle and the Onset of Mass Movements - Consuelo Amat, Johns Hopkins University; Alia Braley, University of California, Berkeley

• Outsourcing Repression - Courtenay R. Conrad, University of California, Merced; Emily Hencken Ritter, Vanderbilt University; Jessica Luce Trounstine, University of California, Merced