Swords before Ploughshares: Extreme Repression in the Shadow of Civil War

• In Event: EITM Research Institute Panel

Brief Overview

This paper analyzes why weak leaders resort to extreme repression. We show that weak leaders over-repress when uncertainty over their capability to sustain repression causes them to overestimate their strength relative to potential challengers.

Authors

• Dogus Aktan, University of Denver

• Gregoire Phillips, UCSD

• Alexander Stephenson, University of California Berkeley