How the State Deals with Opposition

Session Submission Type: Virtual Created Panel

Session Description

In authoritarian and post-communist regimes, state actors may respond to groups and individuals who might oppose it in a variety of ways. To co-opt private sector elites, who might use the material resources at their disposal to resist control, the state can use mechanisms from facilitating wealthy individuals’ participation in established political bodies to coordination through informal mechanisms. To manage non-governmental organizations whose agendas overlap with the state, ruling elites may restrict their domestic activities and their associations with actors overseas like international non-governmental organizations. When this occurs, non-governmental organizations must remake their relationship with the bureaucrats at home by cultivating shared awareness and interests with regard to issues like gender equality. As the state itself responds to opposition, subordinates may exhibit varying compliance in executing coercive tasks. Certain attributes of state agents – such as ethnic affiliation, religious background, and personal history – may create perceptions of untrustworthiness that incentivize greater willingness to repress to demonstrate loyalty. Conversely, state actors may choose to ignore opposition rather than repress or concede, and instead simply wait for the protest cycle to run its course. Papers in this panel examine China and Bulgaria to illuminate the dynamic interactions between the state and those that might oppose it.

Sub Unit

• Division 13: Politics of Communist and Former Communist Countries

Individual Presentations

• Loyalty Signaling and Agent Compliance in Autocracies: Evidence from Mao's China - Jingyuan Qian, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Yunpeng Bai, Yale University

• Achieving Revolutionary Work in the Crevice (Pre-Recorded) - Weiting Wu, Shih Hsin University

• Winning Economic Elites in China: The Role of the United Front Work Department - Zhu Zhang, Tulane University

• New Anti-Corruption Protests in Eastern Europe and Why Politicians Ignore Them - Nina Simeonova Barzachka, College of the Holy Cross

Chair

• Anton Sobolev Yale University

Discussants

• Ellen Carnaghan Saint Louis University

• Ling Chen Johns Hopkins University