Today’s objectives

 

  1. Define: what repression is
  2. Explain: why states repress
  3. Explore: effect of repression on dissent

Map of Moscow in 1937

Arrests in Moscow during Great Terror

 

 

 

Definition:
repression \(=\) use of violence and intimidation to maintain political power


 

 

 

NKVD

 

 

 

 

 

Why repression is important

  • repression is a leading cause of death
  • over 169 million people killed by own governments or occupying powers in 20th century (Rummel 1994)


Heavy toll

 

What kind of violence and intimidation?

 

Violations of personal integrity rights
(i.e. threat or harm to physical body)

 

Repression is coercive

  1. Deterrence logic
    • persuade passive opponents to not challenge state
    • make alternative more costly than status quo
  2. Compellence logic
    • persuade active opponents to stop challenging state
    • make status quo more costly than alternative


 

 

 

Yes, it adds up

Examples

  1. Disappearances
    • people have disappeared
    • political motivation likely
    • victims have not been found
  2. Extrajudicial killings
    • killings of individuals without due process of law
  3. Political imprisonment
    • incarceration of people for
      • non-violent opposition, speech
      • political/religious beliefs
      • non-violent religious practices
      • membership in political/ ethnic/religious group
  4. Torture
    • purposeful inflicting of extreme physical/mental pain
    • cruel or degrading treatment
    • deaths in custody


 

 

 

 

 

Dyba

 

 

 

 

 

Violence and intimidation by whom?

 

Incumbent political authorities

  1. State actors
    • law enforcement
    • intelligence agencies
    • military
  2. Non-state actors
    • pro-regime militias
    • mercenaries
    • ‘goons’


Police

Also police?

 

Violence and intimidation against whom?

 

Opponents of incumbent political authorities

  1. Institutional opponents
    • political parties
    • rival elites
    • NGOs
    • peaceful protesters
  2. Non-institutional opponents
    • insurgents
    • terrorists
    • rioters
    • violent protesters

Repression vs. civil war

  • repression can occur outside of civil war
  • civil war can’t occur without repression (unless there’s no government to defend)


Protestors

Guerillas

Summary

 

Repression
Actor: Incumbent political authorities
Target: Suspected opponents of the incumbent authorities
Action: Use or threat of physical violence
Context: Peacetime or wartime

Discussion:
Where to draw the line between repression and law enforcement?

  • what if political opposition \(=\) crime under law?
  • what if criminal organization is seeking to supplant or replace the government? (e.g. Pablo Escobar)
  • what if a political opponent is prosecuted for a non-political crime?

Why repress?

Threat perceptions

External threats to the state

 

The “Fifth Column”

  1. Logic
    • states target real or potential agents of foreign powers (spies, saboteurs, traitors, collaborators)
    • can occur in wartime or peacetime
  2. The problem
    • insufficient as explanation (some states do this more than others)
    • and limited (‘5th column’ is small subset of repression)


Red scare

Internal threats to the state

 

Domestic Security Threats

  1. Logic
    • states repress to prevent/stop behavior that threatens
      • individual leaders
      • incumbent regime
      • government personnel
      • political system
      • economy
      • lives, beliefs, and livelihoods of constituents
  2. The problem
    • almost every state faces some challenge like this
    • some repress, others don’t
    • what matters more: type of threat or type of state?


 

 

 

So many enemies

Internal threats to the state

 

Types of threat

  1. How high is the destructive potential?
    • violence, property damage
      vs. 
      traffic delays, noise complaints
  2. How large is the support base?
    • mass popular support
      vs. 
      political fringe
  3. How frequent are the threatening acts?
    • sustained, long-term
      vs. 
      periodic, isolated, rare
  4. Where is the threat located?
    • center vs. periphery
    • high vs. low visibility areas


 

Threatening

Less threatening

Institutional constraints

International institutions

 

Human rights treaties

  1. Logic
    • signatories agree domestic human rights practices
    • violation prompts sanctions from 3rd parties, other costs
    • states that sign/ratify HR treaties less likely to repress
  2. The problem
    • selection effects
      (are more repressive states less likely to sign in first place?)
    • requires robust enforcement mechanism (credible threat)


 

 

 

ICC members

Economic interdependence

 

  1. Logic #1: Foreign investment
    • investing in repressive states bad for business (divestment campaigns, boycotts)
    • countries reliant on foreign capital less likely to repress
  2. Logic #2: International trade
    • more economic growth \(\to\) less protest \(\to\) less need for repression
    • diffusion of norms
  3. Logic #3: Economic sanctions
    • sanctions cause hardship \(\to\) government changes policy
  4. The problem
    • effect varies across sectors
    • little empirical evidence that sanctions reduce repression


 

 

 

Magnitskiy

 

 

Regime type

 

Domestic democratic peace

  1. Logic #1: accountability
    • repressive leaders are voted out
  2. Logic #2: norms
    • democracies value free speech, tolerance, civil liberties
  3. Logic #3: institutions
    • democracies provide venue for peaceful articulation of demands, corrective feedback
  4. The problem
    • constraining effect varies by repression type
    • democracy is no panacea


Fewer prisoners

Plenty of torture

Does repression work?

 

 

What are the consequences?

 

does repression

  • deter political opposition?
  • escalate it?
  • curvilinear effect?
  • no effect?


King of the Ashes

 

 

Theory 1: Deterrence

  • repression raises costs of dissent
  • and amplifies collective action problems for opposition

more repression \(\to\) less dissent


Deterrence

 

 

Theory 2: Alienation

  • repression radicalizes opponents
  • and solves collective action problems for opposition (backlash mobilization)

more repression \(\to\) more dissent


Alienation

 

 

Theory 3: Inverted-U hypothesis

  • repression alienates
  • but there is a threshold level of repression, beyond which opposition becomes unable to recruit and resist

 

“half-measures” \(\to\) more dissent

mass repression \(\to\) less dissent


 

Inverted-U

Case study: Chechnya

Background: Caucasus Wars

  1. 1816:
    Aleksey Yermolov becomes viceroy, begins conquest of N. Caucasus
  2. 1817-1864:
    Caucasian Imamate vs. Russia
    \(\to\) mass resettlement, genocide
  3. 1921-1926:
    Akushinskiy insurgency vs. Bolsheviks
    \(\to\) forcible disarmament
  4. 1940-1944:
    Islrailov insurgency vs. Soviets
    \(\to\) mass deportation to Central Asia
  5. 1989: Chechens return home


 

Map of Caucasus

 

 

1st Chechen War, 1994-96

  1. Prelude
    • 1991: Chechnya declares independence
    • Yeltsin ignores this at first
    • low-level Chechen civil war
  2. Main phase
    • 1994: troops sent to restore order
    • catastrophic Russian losses
    • poor intelligence, heavy air power, indiscriminate artillery shelling
  3. Settlement
    • 1996: separatists recapture Grozny
    • Russia signs peace agreement
    • Chechnya becomes de facto independent


 

Restoring order

And leaving

 

2nd Chechen War, 1999-2011

  1. Prelude
    • 1997: Chechen leadership splits
    • rise of Salafi-Jihadis
    • 1999: Basayev, Khattab invade Dagestan to create Islamic state
  2. Main phase
    • 1999: Russia invades Chechnya
    • 2000: Russia takes Grozny, cities
    • 2000-2011: guerrilla war in forests, Russian indiscriminate reprisals
  3. No settlement
    • 2004: Russia enlists former rebels
      (Akhmat and Ramzan Kadyrov)
    • “Chechenization” of conflict
    • violence becomes more selective
    • Chechnya becomes police state


 

Old friends

New friends

Government and rebel violence over time

Insurgency

Counterinsurgency

 

 

What do the data tell us?

  1. Threshold effect exists
    • government violence alienates at low levels, deters at high levels
  2. Reaching the threshold is hard
    • in most cases, Russian violence was below the threshold level
  3. Threshold level depends on tactics
    • selective tactics: lower threshold
    • indiscriminate: high threshold

What does finding #3 suggest about effectiveness of “Chechenization”?


 

Polynomial model

Threshold model

Cross-national evidence

Evidence from armed conflicts around the world, 1989-2019

ACLED (100 countries)

PITF (132 countries)

GED (121 countries)

SCAD (60 countries)

 

Number of violence events per province

 

What do the data tell us?

  1. Threshold effect exists
    • \(\wedge\)-shaped curve in 60%–96% of cases, depending on data source
  2. Level of repression needed to reach threshold varies from case to case
    • some reach it after \(<\) 10 operations/month
    • others reach it after \(>\) 200
  3. Repression still often inflammatory
    • \(/\)-shaped in 0%–12% of cases

Threshold is lower where:

  1. Government has better information
  2. Opponents cut off from foreign support
  3. Opponents are silenced
  4. Government signed human rights treaty


 

Polynomial model

Threshold model

Discussion:
How to avoid creating a police state?

  • is there always a trade-off between reducing government violence and preserving civil liberties?
  • can you think of any countries that have avoided this pattern?

NEXT MEETING

 

Insurgency and Counterinsurgency (Tu, Oct. 3)

  • Chechnya deep dive
  • things to consider:
    • how much continuity/change do you see between Russia’s approach to counterinsurgency in Chechnya and past campaigns (e.g. Western Ukraine after WWII)?
    • how has Russia’s approach in Chechnya differed from U.S. approach in Iraq, Afghanistan?