Bureaucracy & Brutality: An Organizational Approach to Studying State Repression

• In Event: Underexplored Actors and Actions at the Nexus of Repression and Dissent

Abstract

For nearly 50 years, research in political science and sociology has systematically attempted to understand why governments repress their citizens. To date the bulk of attention has been given to exploring the influence of diverse political, economic and demographic characteristics of nation-states. Comparatively, we know much less about the organizational characteristics of repressive institutions. Guided by the extant literature, we believe that it is essential to consider the relationship between “principals” (those who order repressive acts) and “agents” (the individuals physically committing such activities). Differing from this work, however, we believe it is vital to understand the nature and the scale of the challenger threat as perceived by both principals and agents, the relationship between ‘actual’ compared with reported events, and the organization of the repressive apparatus. Specifically, we argue that the nature and scale of the challenger’s threat influences the motives/objectives of the principal and the agent, but to different ends. Event reporting is an essential component of understanding how principals receive information from agents and how that information is converted into threats. And finally, how the repressive apparatus is organized will impact how orders from the principal are given and ultimately received by various agents, including mechanisms for oversight and sanction. To empirically evaluate our argument, we analyze the repressive activity of the United Kingdom (UK) government that took place during the “Troubles” in Northern Ireland from 1968-1998 as well as assess the role of principals and agents in this conflict across time (by day), space (by neighborhood), and actor (by battalion). Using diverse data sources (i.e., government reports, NGO statements, and newspapers), we catalogue the activities of the UK government (both principals and agents) as they interacted with Republican/Catholic as well as Loyalist/Protestant challenging organizations and behaviors. Analyzing these data, we find that threat, reporting, and organization all matter, but their impacts are complex and interactive. Threats experienced by agents on the ground are the greatest predictor of state repression. Those threats only loosely correlate with how information is reported upwards to principals, however. Ultimately, the organizational commands that follow from imprecise reporting generate orders to resupply repressive agents, which in turn subsequently create enduring spells of repression that last well past the elimination of the initial threat. Results from this approach fundamentally advance our knowledge of state violence by revealing how systems of repression are organized and deployed.

Authors

• Christian Davenport, University of Michigan

• Cyanne E. Loyle, Pennsylvania State University

• Christopher M. Sullivan, Louisiana State University