When Repression Fails to Backfire: Movement’s Powers, State’s Power, and Conditions Conducive to International Intervention

• In Event: 214 - Section on Peace, War and Social Conflict Paper Session. Current Issues in Peace, War, and Social Conflict

Abstract

Why does authoritarian repression of popular contention sometimes promote international intervention? Dissident groups generally try to attract outside intervention when they’re in danger, but don’t always succeed. Their capacity to do so has long been treated as a central factor in shaping the outcome of contentious episodes. Although the problem of figuring out what makes activists’ appeals for extra-national involvement generate helpful responses across regime types has received significant academic attention, persisting variability in international responses to ostensibly similar cases warrants rethinking extant explanations. Analytically invested in a political process framework, we argue that examining the political opportunity structure each state faces and presents dissidents – or relative power as captured by each state’s degree of exclusivity and autonomy vis-à-vis other states – can help explain the vastly different outcomes in extra-national response to popular dissent. This line of argument is substantiated based on comparison of the cases of Libya, Syria, and Egypt during the recent Arab Spring.

Authors

• Eitan Y. Alimi, Hebrew University

• David S. Meyer, University of California-Irvine