Abstract
This article examines the conditional effect that repression has on non-violent vs. violent mass mobilization. While governments often resort to violence to deter future mobilization, studies of the repression–dissent nexus have produced divergent evidence with regard to the effect of repression. Many argue that repression tends to backfire, while others demonstrate its effectiveness in reducing mobilization. I argue that the effect of repression varies by differing opposition tactics. I test two competing propositions regarding the effect of repression using event data from the Non-violent and Violent Campaigns and Outcomes dataset (NAVCO 3.0) from 1990 to 2012. The results show that repression, specifically physical repression, of non-violent opposition reduces participation size. Non-physical repression, on the other hand, has less of a deterrence effect on non-violent dissident mobilization.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
