Appeasing Financial Investors: Autocracies’ Responses to Anti-government Protest

• In Event: Poster Session: Comparative Politics I & II
  In Poster Session: Poster Session: Comparative Politics I

Abstract

How does globalization affect an autocratic regime’s response to anti-government protest? Extant research has broadly examined the influences of external actors on the ways that autocratic regimes respond to domestic unrest. More specifically, scholars have investigated the effects of economic sanctions, great powers’ pressure in the context of patronage politics, or transnational activists’ and international organizations’ interventions on state’s responses to protest. However, this paper focuses on the power of globalized markets over an autocratic regime’s suppression options against anti-government protest. I argue that the extent to which an autocratic regime is engaged in the global financial markets imposes new economic costs on political leaders, which restricts or expands their decisions on suppression options responding to anti-government protest. New economic costs involve foreign corporations’ threat to leave the country and financial investors’ flight to safe havens due to the country’s political uncertainty and economic instability caused by the interactions between protesters and the regime. Political leaders of an autocratic regime that is heavily engaged in the globalized financial markets must achieve not only their political goals, that is to hold on to power and defend the regime, but also their economic goals, which is to minimize economic costs of their own and the regime by appeasing financial investors. In this sense, the collective reaction of financial actors is one of the most significant factors to be considered when the autocratic regime decides which response tactics (e.g., repression, accommodation, toleration, etc.) against anti-government protest would be employed to abate domestic turmoil. This paper analyzes anti-government protest events of more than 50 autocracies from 1990 to 2020 when globalization has expanded into autocratic regimes vastly and examines whether a regime’s involvement in global financial markets makes a difference in its responses to anti-government protest. In addition to the quantitative analyses, I elaborate on the two most recent cases, comparing the Chinese government’s relatively passive response to white-paper protest against its Covid-19 mitigation policies to the Iranian government’s harsh repression against anti-hijab protest in 2022.

Author

• Kyu Young Lee, Prairie View A&M University