Toward a Theory of Political Repression

Tanneberg, Dag

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-35477-0_2

Dag Tanneberg²

Part of the book series: Contributions to Political Science ((CPS))

1155 Accesses

Abstract

To ensure political survival, autocrats must prevent popular rebellion, and political repression is a means to that end. However, autocrats face threats from both the inside and the outside of the center of power. They must avoid popular rebellion and at the same time share power with strategic actors who enjoy incentive to challenge established power-sharing arrangements whenever repression is ordered. Can autocrats turn repression in a way that allows trading one threat off against the other? This chapter first argues that prior research offers scant insight on that question because it relies on umbrella concepts and questionable measurements of repression. Next, the chapter disaggregates repression into restrictions and violence and reflects on their drawbacks. Citizens adapt to the restriction of political civil liberties, and violence backfires against its originators. Hence, restrictions require enforcement, and violence requires moderation. When interpreted as complements, it becomes clear that restrictions and violence have the potential to compensate for their respective weaknesses. The complementarity between violence and restrictions turns political repression into a valuable addition to the authoritarian toolkit. The chapter concludes with an application of these ideas to the twin problems of authoritarian control and power-sharing.

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Notes

1.
For an exhaustive discussion of legislative assemblies in authoritarian regimes see Schuler and Malesky (2014).
2.
For an extensive literature review see Magaloni and Kricheli (2010).
3.
For a slightly older but still instructive overview consult Gandhi and Lust-Okar (2009). Morgenbesser (2017) offers another insightful summary of the debate.
4.
Dimitrov and Sassoon (2014); Escriba-Folch (2013); Boudreau (2004); Way and Levitsky (2006) author focused case comparisons, while Escriba-Folch (2013) studies a global sample of authoritarian regimes. However, these contributions lack strong theoretical accounts of political repression.
5.
With the partial exception of North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il who was reportedly able to teleport (Hassig and Oh 2010, 55).
6.
For an exhaustive list of references, see Carey (2009), p. 18f. and Davenport (2007a), 8.
7.
The next chapter will return to that question because the answer is fundamentally important when measuring repression.
8.
For in-depth discussions of state terror(ism) see Stohl and Lopez (1984, 1986), Jackson (2011), Riekenberg (2013).
9.
For a related effort, see Backes and Kailitz (2014).
10.
Since Geddes (1999) first connected the chance for democratization to types of authoritarianism numerous attempts have been made to map the diversity of authoritarian regimes (e.g., Geddes et al. 2014; Cheibub et al. 2010; Hadenius and Teorell 2007; Wahman et al. 2013). Those contributions sparked a debate too rich to be summarized here (see Lai and Slater 2006; Ezrow and Frantz 2011; Svolik 2012; Wilson 2014; Márquez 2017).
11.
Neither does the debate between Lueders and Croissant (2014, 2015) and Kailitz and Tanneberg (2015) touch on the relationship between the three pillars of authoritarian rule.
12.
The two definitions to follow differ markedly from the prevalent interpretations of the terms in (political) economy. In economy, two goods x and y are complements if a decrease in the price for x increases the demand for y. Conversely, x and y are substitutes if an increase in price for x increases the demand for y (Case et al. 2012, 55). Both terms receive exact meaning from their cross elasticities and place no assumptions on other properties of x and y. At the same time, however, complementarity and substitution in the economist’s sense refer to observed associations between two goods. They do not speculate on the cause of that empirical interdependency (Crouch 2010, 127).
13.
The phenomenon goes by several different names. “Political jiu- jitsu” (Sharp 1973), “backlash” (Aytaç et al. 2017), and “backfire” (Hess and Martin 2006) all figure prominently in the literature.
14.
In 1966 UN Resolution 2142 (XXI) declared March 21 the annual International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.
15.
Assume a fixed budget for repression and efficient allocation of resources across all of its forms. Then an increase in budget increases the level of all repressive policies because rational governments will again allocate the surplus efficiently. To give a crude example: Assume that two security agencies have mutually exclusive jurisdictions. The activity of one agency precludes the involvement of the other—they are substitutes. Furthermore, assume that oil discoveries increase the available funds for repression. Now the budget for both state security agencies increases even though they have mutually exclusive jurisdictions.

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Dag Tanneberg

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Tanneberg, D. (2020). Toward a Theory of Political Repression. In: The Politics of Repression Under Authoritarian Rule. Contributions to Political Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-35477-0_2

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-35477-0_2
Published: 03 January 2020
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