Security Personnel, Social Embeddedness, and State Violence

• In Event: Strategies of Incumbent Survival: New Tradeoffs

Abstract

How do autocrats optimize their internal security forces to address varied types of regime threats? How do staffing patterns impact patterns of violence against civilians? In this paper, I argue that autocrats strategically post internal security officers based on the type of popular threat in a given location and the extent to which an agent is socially embedded there. Drawing on an original dataset on the staffing of military intelligence forces in authoritarian Argentina (1976-1983), I demonstrate that socially embedded agents are significantly more likely to be posted in areas characterized by insurgent threats than in areas characterized by mass unrest and street protests. I argue that this pattern is related to the informational and network-based advantages of socially embedded agents and their propensity to engage in targeted repression rather than indiscriminate violence. I test this theory using new data on civilian collaborators and patterns of violence.

Author

• Haley Allen DeMarco, Yale University