Search

While it is obvious that the space for protests in Hong Kong has declined significantly, it is far less apparent how the political culture has been transformed. Based on an analytical framework using the Lefebvrian concept of space, the paper draws on the July 1st protest march to trace how the political space of the population has been reduced. Relatively quickly, Hong Kong has transformed from a vibrant civil society to one marked by fear and self-censorship similar to other authoritarian regimes. Following an expansion of protest space during the 2019 anti-extradition bill movement, the Chinese government has enacted a National Security Law to eliminate most political activism. The study shows the success of the government's repression although the long-term impact is not yet clear. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Genotoxic stress resulting from DNA damage is resolved through a signaling cascade known as the DNA Damage Response (DDR). The repair of damaged DNA is essential for cell survival, often requiring the DDR to attenuate other cellular processes such as the cell cycle, DNA replication, and transcription of genes not involved in DDR. The complex relationship between DDR and transcription has only recently been investigated. Transcription can facilitate the DDR in response to double-strand breaks (DSBs) and stimulate nucleotide excision repair (NER). However, transcription may need to be reduced to prevent potential interference with the repair machinery. In this review, we discuss various mechanisms that regulate transcription repression in response to different types of DNA damage, categorizing them by their range and duration of effect. Finally, we explore various models of transcription recovery following DNA damage-induced repression. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present the first study to measure the beliefs held by Italian laypeople about how human memory works, using a newly developed tool: the Italian Memory Belief Questionnaire (IMBQ). Research conducted in other countries has demonstrated that beliefs about memory vary widely between different professional and non-professional groups, indicating that limitations exist regarding the dissemination of empirically researched scientific knowledge. To ascertain what Italian people understand about memory-related topics, including eyewitness testimony, repression of traumatic memories and factors influencing memory recall, 301 native Italian participants completed the IMBQ in Study 1. In Study 2, 346 additional participants completed the IMBQ, alongside various additional measures, to examine the construct validity of our new instrument and investigate socio-demographic predictors of memory beliefs. Exploratory factor analysis in Study 1 identified three distinct belief factors that were present in the dataset: eyewitness and memory reliability, trauma and remembering and aspects that improve remembering. Study 2 partially confirmed this factor structure and found IMBQ scores to correlate with existing memory belief questionnaires. Correlations were also found between the IMBQ subscales and measures of fantasy proneness, but not dissociation. In both studies, many Italian laypeople strongly endorsed the notion that controversial topics (i.e., repression) are possible. Contrastingly, Italian laypeople do appear to understand the conceivable inaccuracies of memory in eyewitness settings. Sex, age and education were shown to predict beliefs about memory. Findings are discussed in relation to the importance of addressing misinformation about memory, especially in clinical and forensic settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

1Internet shutdowns have become a popular instrument for repressive regimes to silence dissent in a digitized world. While authorities seek to suppress opponents by imposing Internet outages, we know little about how the public reacts to such incisive measures. The regime might face anger and resentment from the public as a response to Internet deprivation. Why do regimes still use Internet shutdowns when they do not only face economic but also societal losses? In this paper, I argue that Internet shutdowns lower the public's evaluation of the political leadership as citizens blame the government for the service outages. For the analysis, I combine fine-grained data on Internet outages with survey data from the Afrobarometer and apply an "unexpected event during survey design." Results show that citizens do not hold the government accountable for Internet disruptions, thus making Internet shutdowns a powerful tool for autocrats to silent dissent digitally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What happens when actors in social movements (SMs) fail to achieve their goals? Written against the general tendency in current scholarship, this article examines the case of the actors in the Rif Hirak activism, which emerged in northern Morocco following the tragic death of a fishmonger in the port of the city of Al Hoceima, to probe the impact of collective action on actors in SMs. To achieve this purpose, this article is twofold: First, it examines the link between repression and emigration. Second, based on online interview data gathered from a small sample of Hirak activists (n = 13), the article argues that, as the Hirak waned; the Rif activists resorted to emigration as a means to express political discontent and alternatively resist government repression. This demonstrates that a combination of factors intersect to justify protesters’ decision to emigrate. These intersecting factors include: (a) the threat of arrest and torture, (b) family pressure, (c) distrust in the state, (d) frustration with the lack of economic opportunities in the Rif, and (e) disappointment at the ability of the movement to bring about change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine triggered the immediate outmigration of its citizens, hundreds of thousands of whom fled to the Caucasus and Central Asia. Yet, extant theories of conflict-based migration offer limited insight into why so many Russians left suddenly in response to the war. Nor can they account for the reversal of flows of skilled labor migration, which had previously gone to the metropole. Drawing on in-depth interviews and focus groups with first-wave Russian emigres, we find that the domestic support for the invasion intensified opposition-minded Russians' sense of political alienation, while legal repression motivated their immediate exit. However, the globalization of white-collar labor shaped who left. Finally, migration policy and a lower cost of living, in conjunction with other colonial legacies, shaped legal and economic mobility in ways that drew Russians to Central Asia and the Caucasus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides theoretical and contextual background to The Academic Question of Palestine. Building on the work of Edward Said, we maintain that Palestine constitutes a unique question with special status in international academic spaces, particularly in the West, because of its entanglement with other imperial and settler colonial forms of dispossession. We argue that the special place that Zionism and its defence has occupied for decades in academia has rendered Palestine one of the thorniest and most divisive issues of our time. In the new millennium, the birth of the BDS movement; the emergence of new solidarities with global anti-racist movements; the scholarly and human rights consensus that Israel constitutes a regime settler colonial apartheid; the acceleration of Zionist violence, until the Gaza genocide, have generated new forms of repression and resistance in the academic space. This Special Issue offers the tools for understanding these recent transformations of the question of Palestine. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In general, Palestine solidarity activism—irrespective of how and where it happens—faces censorship and repression, whereby solidarity with Palestine as a (national) cause is stigmatized and considered toxic to any mainstream discussion of the politics of Palestine/Israel. Academia tends to follow this norm of stigmatization and toxification of Palestine solidarity and any recognition of the legitimacy of the Palestinian struggle for liberation is viewed as a violation of the norms of scientific (i.e. objective) knowledge production. More recently, the adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance working definition of antisemitism has played a critical role in censuring and censoring individual scholars and scholarship deemed too supportive of the Palestinian struggle. In this article, however, I view this manner of repression as embedded in a political project that extends far beyond the working definition. Specifically, I argue that the academic repression of Palestine solidarity draws on the lasting discursive legacies of the Global War on Terror that sought to bifurcate the world into 'good' and 'evil.' Drawing on my personal experiences of repression where my work has been charged as being antisemitic, sympathetic to terrorism/terrorists and defending fundamentalism, I argue that lumping Palestinian solidarity with all things evil, abnormal, disruptive, negative, and inappropriate represents a continuation of the Global War on Terror as the Palestinian cause is toxified as nothing more than an extension of the 'Axis of Evil.' [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An exploration of how discourses around free speech actually facilitaterepression against those expressing pro-Palestine sentiment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Under what conditions do riotous-violent protests increase the likelihood of protest success? The protest literature has largely found that riotous-violent protests (RVPs) are not effective. However, a burgeoning literature contradicts these findings. We extend this literature by exploring how waves of RVPs increase the likelihood of protest success. Protesters learn from past protest-government response dyads, which reduces the costs of continued protest in the face of repression. The temporal accumulation of riotous-violent protests exhausts the resources and collective will of the regime to continually hold out on protester demands. Thus, as the number of RVPs increases in a country-year, we expect there to be a coinciding increase in instances of government accommodation. Furthermore, we argue that democracy conditions the relationship between waves of RVPs and protest success. We conduct a cross-national observational data analysis of 119 countries from 1990 to 2019 using data from the Mass Mobilization Project. Our results support both of our hypotheses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite calls for examining how authoritarian regimes employ state structures to prolong their rule and evidence that they regulate religion to shape the behaviour of religious elites, there has been little attention devoted to religious affairs ministries, which are key sites of interaction between religious actors and the state, and are often the primary institution through which regimes manage religion. This study identifies and describes eight core areas these ministries regulate that can be used as instruments for repression and co-optation of regime opponents, and state legitimation: prayer, appointments, education, religious advice and decisions, religious endowments, media, registration, and charity. In this analysis, we seek to bridge the gap between the literatures on religion, the Middle East, and authoritarianism by synthesizing recent research and analysing religious affairs ministries in the Middle East-North Africa (MENA) region. We argue that by fulfilling these functions, religion ministries are not benign bureaucracies but impactful institutions of political control. In highlighting key questions that remain unanswered, we outline a research agenda for continued advances towards theorizing how authoritarian regimes might make use of state resources to protect their rule. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Money is the epitome of Marx's fetishised commodity. And, in Marxist discussions of the connected topics of currency and commodity fetishism, it often is left under-appreciated that such fetishism reaches its apotheosis only with the development of 'interest-bearing capital.' Herein, I perform two complementary gestures, one as regards Marxism and another with respect to psychoanalysis. Apropos Marxism, I counter-balance the usual, long-standing (over)emphasis on commodity fetishism as per the first volume of Das Kapital with a foregrounding of this fetishism as per the third volume. Apropos psychoanalysis, I shift away from its traditional fixation on reducing financial matters to libidinal contents. I explore instead the implications of the forms of capitalist fetishism for reconsidering the forms of intra-subjective defence mechanisms. This leads me to posit a complementary inversion of Lacan's dictum according to which 'repression is always the return of the repressed': The return of the repressed sometimes is the most effective repression. To pose a rhetorical question paraphrasing Brecht: What is the laundering of money compared with the laundering that is money? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How have political opportunities impacted the recent failure of social mobilizations for women's reproductive rights in Poland? This article seeks to explain why change has not happened despite two social mobilization waves, one of which was the largest in democratic Poland, attracting unprecedented public support. Delving into the political environment in which social mobilization emerged, we argue that women's movements for reproductive rights lacked strong roots in Polish society, being marginalized since 1989 to 2007. Simultaneously, an alliance of ruling elites, the Catholic Church and state-controlled media, have consistently been able to curb social movement demands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The literature on repression in social movement studies focuses mainly on protest behavior and neglects other aspects of activism. This paper expands this literature by looking at how surveillance as a covert form of repression affects organizational practices in social movements. The secessionist mobilizations around the 1 October 2017 referendum in Catalonia serve as a case study to explore this question. Semi-structured interviews with organizers from the Catalan independence movement were used to identify two surveillance threats. Organizers feared the monitoring of their digital communication and the infiltration of their assemblies. They responded to these threats with five moves of counter-surveillant organizing: encryption, face-to-face communication, analogizing meetings, committee decision making, and closingoff assemblies. How organizers perceived surveillance and responded was closely connected to the cyclical dynamics of contention over time. The five moves allowed the movement to resist surveillance at least in the short term without moderating their claims or going underground. However, they were also harmful to the Catalan independence movement's organizing culture based on inclusivity and horizontality. These findings suggest that the consequences of repression for social movements go well beyond protest behavior and have a profound impact on their organizational practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines continuing misunderstanding about memory function especially for trauma, across three UK samples (N = 717). Delayed allegations of child sexual and physical abuse are prevalent in Western legal systems and often rely upon uncorroborated memory testimony to prove guilt. U.K. legal professionals and jurors typically assess the reliability of such memory recall via common sense, yet decades of scientific research show common sense beliefs often conflict with science. Recent international surveys show controversial notions of repression and accurate memory recovery remain strongly endorsed. In historical cases, these notions may lead to wrongful convictions. The current study surveyed the U.K. public, lawyers, and mental health professionals' beliefs about repression, dissociative amnesia and false memories. Study findings give unique data on judges' and barristers' beliefs. Overall, the study findings reinforce international scientists' concerns of a science – knowledge-gap. Repression was strongly endorsed by lay, legal and clinical participants (> 78%) as was dissociative amnesia (> 87%). Moreover, suboptimal professional legal education and juror guidance may increase misunderstanding. Correcting beliefs about memory function, and extending the contribution of memory science in the courtroom remains an important quest for cognitive scientists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The escalation of militarized interstate disputes (MIDs) into interstate wars has been studied extensively with opportunity and willingness frameworks. In this article, we conceptualize and operationalize proto-insurgencies as a civil war equivalent to MIDs. Just as most MIDs do not escalate into interstate war, most proto-insurgencies never make the key tactical transitions needed to produce the onset of civil war. We separately examine proto-insurgency formation and proto-insurgency escalation to onset. We find that proto-insurgency formation is associated with political persecution, such as denial of access to justice, regime corruption, and mid-range levels of repression. Our theoretical focus is on how state repressive violence creates diffusion effects that push proto-insurgencies toward the tactical transitions that enable the escalation to civil war. Proto-insurgency escalation to civil war onset is driven by high levels of state repressive violence directed against proto-insurgency and its area of origin. This leads to the dispersal of proto-insurgents and the displacement of surrounding populations, inducing the spread of state repression to a larger number of administrative units. This creates the foundation for guerrilla warfare and establishes the conditions for rebels to offer sanctuary to displaced persons in return for active support, marking the onset of civil war. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent philosophical and (neuro)psychological discussions of phenomena such as motivated forgetting, memory inhibition, self-deception, and implicit bias, various authors have suggested that repression might be a useful notion to make sense of these phenomena, or that these phenomena indeed provide evidence for repression. However, surprisingly, these claims usually do not rely on any explicit model of repression. Consequently, it remains unclear whether invoking repression in these discussions is justified. In this paper, I propose a psychological “how-possibly” model that can serve as a basis for scientific research that I call the hybrid model of repression. This model combines the advantages while avoiding the problems of two types of models of repression – the higher-order model and the separation model – that have been discussed and defended by different authors and that both have their origin in Freud. This “how-possibly” model may then set the stage for further empirical research, which can form the basis for a “how-actually” model in the longer run. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Transborder ethnic ties constitute an alignment between an ethnic minority group and its external ethnic kin in another country. Similar to interstate alliances, in which a powerful state extends its deterrent capability to protect its protégé state against another state, a powerful external kin can extend its deterrent capability to protect a minority group against the target government. I employ deterrence theory and develop a game-theoretical model to analyze the triadic strategic interaction between a government, a minority group, and this minority group's external kin. I argue that a minority group can only be effectively protected by its external kin when the external kin possesses a credible and capable threat of using force. I test the predictions of my model with a newly developed dataset covering 20 minority groups and 5 powerful ethnic kin. The results show that a highly credible and capable threat by an external kin significantly decreases the likelihood of government repression in the form of active and targeted political discrimination. Specifically, previous economic support to the minority group by their militarily powerful external kin constitutes a strong signal of a credible military threat, contributing to general deterrence and diminishing the probability of repression. This research contributes to the literature by moving beyond the mostly invariant factors, such as geographical proximity or the nature of ties between the groups, to understand the effect of an external ethnic kin on a minority's security. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conspiracy culture cultivates suspicion towards the hidden workings of power. While some modes of suspicion direct critical attention towards the crimes and cruelties of oppressive social relations, other modes misdirect that same attention. When such misdirection serves to reproduce oppressive social relations, entrapping its adherents in the promise of emancipation, this may be understood as ‘repressive suspicion’. Empirically, this concept is characterized, herein, via a reception study of the QAnon conspiracy theory, reconstructing how one of the most prominent participants in the insurrection in Washington, D.C., on 6th January 2021 became wrapped up in ‘Q’ culture – a story that paints a poignant, complex picture of repressive suspicion. This concept is then further developed in historical and theoretical terms, in dialogue with the works of Herbert Marcuse, leading to an analysis of QAnon as a microcosm of the contemporary crisis of hegemony, drawing on Antonio Gramsci, Stuart Hall, and Nancy Fraser. While, in the 1960s, and even in the 1990s, repressive suspicion could be largely ignored by practitioners of political critique, in the current conjuncture this is no longer the case. Thus, as well as constructing a diagnosis, this article also poses a question: If this is what repressive suspicion looks like, how must we conceive its opposite? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines processes of (de-) politicization among Egyptian student activists in the post-2011 context. Based on ethnographic observation, interviews and focus groups, I argue that the rapid and successive political changes – with the revolution in 2011 then the coup d’état in 2013 – made the boundaries separating institutional, contentious and prefigurative politics fluid. As student activists debated if their claims and activities were ‘student-related’ or ‘political’, several conceptions of politics and political action coexisted among them and their understanding of politics fluctuated. These evolving conceptions created gaps and contradictions allowing for the negotiation of the meaning of their various activities. The negotiation of politics is a collective pattern but was also reflected in, and reflective of evolving individual subjectivities. As young students lived through the revolution, entered university and joined or left a group, their perceptions of their roles and of the political meaning of their present and past activities changed. The rising repression in 2013/14 shaped the activists’ tactics, as well as their perceived priorities and the meaning of activities, thus amplifying the negotiation of politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mahsa (Zhina) Amini, a young Kurdish woman who had travelled to Tehran to visit her family, died in the custody of the morality police on 16 September 2022 for allegedly not wearing her hijab properly. Her death provoked outrage across the country. An image of her in the hospital where she lost her life, and a handwritten sign on her grave ‘you have not died, your name will become a code’, quickly went viral. Months of nationwide protests by hundreds of thousands followed her death. Thousands were arrested and injured. Hundreds were killed on the streets and a number of protesters were executed. This article discusses the emergence of the movement, its transformation, achievements and challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses the origins, practice, and prospects of the 2013 Fiji Constitution, which delivers on aspects of Brij Lal's hopes for a civilian government under a liberal democratic constitution. Yet the Constitution is also distinctly illiberal in concentrating enormous power in just two offices, and in its unusual amnesty and amendment procedures. It creates a winner-takes-all government system that grants electoral victors great powers. They are constrained mainly by the self-appointed extra-constitutional and expansive role of the RFMF as guardian of the Fijian people and the 2013 Constitution, rendering uncertain the constitutional review proposals of the new regime, elected in December 2022. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between terrorism and human rights has attracted considerable research and policy attention. As countries grapple with formulating effective strategies to combat terrorist groups, governments have faced criticism for resorting to increased repression in the name of counterterrorism. One common response by states to terrorism has been the implementation of counterterrorism legislation, with numerous countries enacting such laws in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks to establish a legal framework for addressing the terrorist threat. In this paper, we delve into the impact of counterterrorism legislation on abuses by the state, with a specific focus on the use of torture and political imprisonment. We argue that the introduction of counterterrorism legislation has exposed more citizens to the threat of being detained and the risk of torture by state forces. We contend that this relationship is particularly pronounced in countries adopting new counterterrorism legislation after 9/11. To substantiate our argument, we utilise data on counterterrorism legislation and conduct empirical testing, uncovering some supportive evidence for the relationship between the introduction of counterterrorism legislation and the prevalence of torture and political imprisonment, especially in cases where new laws were introduced in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies of the participatory legacies of social movements in democratic settings often find that the individuals who take part in these movements remain more likely to engage in politics, decades later. What is the participatory legacy of social movements in authoritarian regimes, where they are often repressed and erased from public memory? Understanding such impacts is challenging due to self-selection and severe censorship. In this paper, we address both challenges with a unique design, comparing the behavior of individuals who began college just before and just after a massive student movement. This design allows us to measure exposure to the movement and the subsequent state crackdown without directly asking respondents and also addresses endogeneity by predicting exposure using an exogenous indicator, birthdate. We find that exposure to the movement increased participation in elections, reduced participation in protest and lobbying, and had no impact on conventional participation. We argue that social movements can continue to shape patterns of political participation in authoritarian regimes, decades after being crushed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractIn this paper, we examine the relationship between the process of autocratisation and protests, and argue that scholarship on electoral autocracies should not only focus on major protest cycles but also examine ‘ordinary’ protests to understand how social and political actors resist and push back against autocratisation. Using an original dataset of protest events from 2015 to 2021, we analyse the transformation of protests in Turkey as it experienced gradual but significant autocratisation. We discuss two mechanisms through which autocratisation might affect levels, actors and repertoires of protesting: first, via increasing repression; and, second, via the policy choices of the authoritarian regime. Our findings indicate that protests continued even under the state of emergency in Turkey, but with significant changes in levels and repertoires of protesting. The protest scene was dominated by protests using tactics that rely on a small number of individuals and are contained in their spatial reach and disruptiveness. This research underlines the importance of examining ordinary protests to analyse how autocratisation transforms protests, using original data from local sources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within the framework of a broader research project, the results of an analysis of the role of repression and forced recruitment in the Spanish Civil War is presented. This article focuses on a specific region that was taken over by the coup plotters from July 1936 onwards. This region, Galicia (in the northwest of the Iberian Peninsula) was the main recruitment centre for the insurgent (nationalist) side. This article aims to show the role that recruitment played in the imposition of repressive terror in the rearguard, something that has been little studied in war studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Intellectual dissent in the USSR has been an important feature of the political scene there since the trial of Sinyavsky and Daniel, in February 1966, and the appearance of the Chronicle of Current Events in April 1968. Inevitably it has generated a wide ranging debate in the West, not only about its character and long term perspectives, but also about those forces of the society which produced it. Indeed, the manifestation of intellectual discontent appeared to some as sui generis; a sudden, unannounced, but welcome relief. The dissidents seemed like a godsend. Academic empiricists, starved of reliable data; at last had some hard facts to work on. Professional anti-communists, possibly worried about the Soviet Union's apparent and disconcerting stability, could point a knowing finger at what they considered to be a significant 'anti-Soviet' tendency. Marxists, critical of the USSR, but still optimistic about its socialist potential thought that they could detect a force ready and willing to take up the fight for Leninism and the reconstitution of a genuine communism. The dissidents were indeed all things to all people in 1968. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The news media have given saturation coverage in the past six months to two developments in the USSR: the detente with the West and the activities (both in the USSR and abroad) of the Soviet (The word Soviet is used simply in reference to the country without any implication as to the nature of the regime. Russia cannot be employed as it does not embrace the non-Russian nationalities) liberal dissidents. As this article tries to, show, the two events are not unrelated. It is important to understand the background to both as well as the significance of the emergence of a largely right-wing intelligentsia. The latter can best be understood in terms of the repression of the left together with the evolution of an ideology which fits their own socio-economic position. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Authoritarian responsiveness, as opposed to repression, is expected to quell social unrest. Yet, not only did institutionalized measures to strengthen citizen rights in Vietnam's 2013 Land Law fail to mitigate social unrest, but unrest also became more explosive in the Dong Tam land clash, the deadliest to have taken place in Vietnam's contemporary history. Why does authoritarian responsiveness fail to alleviate social contention? How can responsiveness subsequently heighten, rather than diminish, social resistance? This article explains the paradox of responsiveness by developing a feedback theory of repression-responsiveness through a case study of the Dong Tam land conflict. We argue that authoritarian responsiveness can amplify unrest by providing citizens with a legible transcript for contentious claim-making. At the same time, it also equips the regime with a public transcript to limit accommodations of societal claims and to engage in repression. This exploitation of the law, in turn, provides positive feedback to unrest while encouraging citizens to further adopt the regime's own transcript in their resistance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Autocrats around the world are making unprecedented investments in new, digital surveillance technologies to monitor their societies as well as to identify and repress pockets of dissent. Using an original dataset of local procurement of digital surveillance technologies, merged with micro-data on collective action events, I examine the logic and motivation for the digital surveillance buildup in China, the bellwether of digital dictatorships. I find that localities do indeed tend to allocate increased spending for digital surveillance in response to high volumes of collective action. Why citizens protest appears to be of less concern: protest claims do not have a significant impact on digital surveillance spending. However, how citizens protest makes a great deal of difference: more violent protests prompt significantly higher levels of investment in digital surveillance. This study’s findings have important implications for understanding autocrats’ evolving strategies of control in the digital age. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2009, following several countries including Burundi and Nigeria, a proposal was introduced in Rwanda to criminalize same-sex sex and lgbt activism. However, unlike the other countries, Rwanda's Article 217 criminalization proposal was eliminated within months of its introduction. While this result can be understood as a success story, it also can elide the obstacles Rwandan activists experience when organizing for lgbt people. The cross-movement coalition that formed to oppose Article 217 specifically adopted a nonconfrontational strategy designed to work within the authoritarian political system in Rwanda. While activists framed the removal of Article 217 as aligned with existing government priorities, the dialogue strategy has clear limits when activists' goals are to make further changes in Rwanda, particularly when government officials do not see further changes as aligned with their priorities. A combination of the authoritarian system and the government's focus on economic development and individual advancement narrowly circumscribe what types of activism the government will accept. This imperative to conform to government expectations means activists adopt rhetoric and encourage lgbt people to engage in activities that are focused on how they appear as individuals. This focus on the individual elides the wider structural problems that exist in Rwanda that perpetuate discrimination againstlgbt people, particularly those who experience multiple marginalizations. Lgbt activism is circumscribed so it can occur in Rwanda, but this has consequences for how much change is advocated for and who benefits from this activism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do autocrats communicate about repression? Previous studies have analysed how autocratic officials justify the repression of large-scale protests to avoid backlash effects. However, we know much less about how everyday repression against dissidents and ordinary citizens is communicated and justified under authoritarianism. This paper is the first to systematically investigate how officials in autocracies justify, conceal, or deny repression employed by different state actors. It studies the communication of repression in two North African autocracies by analysing the novel Justifications of Repressive Incidents in Morocco and Tunisia Dataset (JuRI). The event dataset contains 439 instances of repression between 2000 and 2010 and disaggregates various dimensions of repression and its communication. The empirical analysis shows how the chosen forms of repression influence ensuing patterns of communication and justification. Studying the communication of repression helps us better understand the nexus of legitimation, judicial repression and political violence in autocracies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since Sigmund Freud developed and popularized psychoanalysis, this psychological theory has significantly influenced contemporary thinking, particularly in philosophical disciplines focused on understanding human behavior and addressing social problems. Take the examples of political philosophy, race theory, and feminist thought, among many others. However, although sport philosophy qualifies as one such discipline, scholars in this field have given little to no attention to psychoanalysis and psychoanalytical theorists. Remarkably, psychoanalytical notions, especially those of Eric Berne and Norman O. Brown, significantly shaped Bernard Suits' pioneering thoughts on games. Nevertheless, sport philosophers have largely overlooked the importance of psychoanalysis in Suits' examinations of games and, more broadly speaking, rarely attempted to apply psychoanalytical concepts to their analyses of sport. In this paper, I explain the psychoanalytical roots of Suits' theory of games and explore how much of his theory of games is indebted to psychoanalysis. Specifically, I first compare Suits' analysis of unconscious gameplay to psychoanalytic concepts of repression and neurosis. Subsequently, I explore the alignment between Suits' views on gameplay and psychoanalytic accounts of play and pleasure. To conclude, I examine the therapeutic and emancipatory character of Suits' proposal, drawing parallels between his philosophical corpus and critical theorists whose critical analyses of modern society are heavily indebted to Freud. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines democratic backsliding in Algeria through a focus on the Hirak movement, born in 2019. Specifically, it explores government repression and the resulting impact on political action (the use of terrorism charges, the banning of parties, the prosecution of political activists and leaders). To this end, the article will present a 'timeline' of repression over the past four years, showcasing relevant numbers and trends that speak to the movement's activism and responses by the government. The article incorporates primary data collected from the country, including through interlocutor activists who have borne the brunt of government crackdowns. Ultimately, the article seeks to investigate the ways in which Tebboune's government has made it impossible for a viable opposition force to emerge from the Hirak – The obstacles to democratic progress Some of those who haven't took part in initiatives within the Hirak such as the platform for discussions 'Nida 22' or joined groups for the support and the defense of political prisoners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dissociative amnesia is controversial. We tested other factors that could contribute to an inability to remember an important aspect of a traumatic event: how traumatic the event was, organic amnesia, dissociative state, childhood amnesia, expression suppression, sleep disturbance, repeated experiences, and ordinary forgetting. Trauma survivors who reported an inability to remember an important aspect of a traumatic event rated the event as traumatic as trauma survivors who reported no such inability to remember. Moreover, all cases of an inability to remember an important aspect of the traumatic event could be explained by at least one factor other than dissociative amnesia. These findings are contrary to dissociative amnesia. Compared to participants who reported no inability to remember an important aspect of the traumatic event, participants who did report an inability to remember were more likely to (1) have felt disconnected from their body during the traumatic event, which may have altered memory encoding, (2) have experienced sleep problems in the year after the traumatic event, which may have reduced memory consolidation, and (3) have experienced the traumatic event repeatedly, which may have led to less detailed memories. These findings have implications for the inclusion of dissociative amnesia in the DSM. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study proposes a new theoretical model of the decision-making process that mobilizes individuals to engage in terrorism. The model accounts for the effects of a state's ability to retain power, a state's various counterterrorism strategies, and the club goods provided by terrorist organizations. The comparative statics demonstrate that a state's ability to retain power and a policy of counterterrorism that employs exclusive accommodation prevents terrorist mobilization, while the club goods provided by terrorist organizations have the reverse effect. In addition, repressive counterterrorism backfires if its direct effect is less than its provocative effect. The model contributes to the current knowledge base of theoretical understanding of terrorism by considering bipartite effect of repressive policies, and exclusiveness of accommodative counterterrorism policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Gezi Park protests are a milestone for system-challenging collective action practices in Turkey. Now, ten years later, we look back on the protests and their legacy. While the protests started in May 2013 as a response to the Taksim Project, which aimed to remove Gezi Park, they brought together thousands of people, including many who were protesting for the first time, to voice their opposition to then Prime Minister Erdoğan and his policies. Participants were initially held together by their opposition to Erdoğan, but soon overarching identities emerged that increased the connections between groups and created a solidarity that continued, in many cases, for years. In this piece we discuss the events that led up to the Gezi Park protests, the impact on its participants, and the outcome and legacy that they left behind. While the sociopolitical landscape has changed a great deal in the last ten years, the impact of the Gezi Park protests on Turkish society and culture remains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Under COVID-19 emergency decrees, countries imposed freedom-restricting measures that health experts endorsed to contain the disease. There has been debates about whether the pandemic has led to the backsliding of democratic standards and the promotion of illiberal and authoritarian practices. This study conducted a survey in Hong Kong, a non-democracy. At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the government postponed an election widely expected to be won by the opposition. This study explores whether health experts' opinions could affect public support for postponement of a regular election and government trustworthiness. It finds that neither health experts' affirmation nor negation increased support for the postponement, but rejecting the government mandate reduced government trustworthiness while affirming it did not. The negative opinions thus had asymmetric information value against affirmative opinions in a known-censored environment. This channel operates through democrats in Hong Kong, who are critical citizens of the regime. The strategy of silencing dissent would be cost-effective for preserving political trust while engaging experts to support the mandates appeared unhelpful. This study contributes to understanding the use of experts in influencing political trust within an authoritarian setting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that the decision of an authoritarian regime to use repression depends both on the repressing agent and the costs as well as the threat perception. This is illustrated in the comparison between two environmental protests in Viet Nam. In 2015, the Vietnamese press reported that police had used tear gas against protesters opposing massive pollution by the Vinh Tan 2 thermal power plant but later treated the violent protesters with leniency. In contrast, the 2016 protest against the Formosa Ha-Tinh Steel Corporation was widely censored in the press and numerous peaceful protesters were arrested and harshly punished. The Vinh Tan case was not perceived as a threat and the costs of repression were judged to be high, while in the case of Formosa, the initial denials of responsibility raised the costs for the regime and the movement that emerged eventually was perceived to be a threat to the regime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Claims made during mass protests in Hong Kong in 2019 and Thailand in 2020 became increasingly transgressive. Localist demands and calls for the reform of the monarchy, respectively, violated conventional political norms in these two hybrid regimes. This paper examines the dynamics of opposition discursive radicalization during ongoing autocratization. Observational data and protest event analysis are employed to assess the scaling up of claims-making and its relationship to protest size and group solidarity. The paper argues that radicalization can best be understood relationally, between a hybrid regime, on the one hand, and moderates and radicals in the opposition, on the other. It identifies the following three points of convergence that lead to similar protest trajectories in both cases: the marginalization of moderates along with their gatekeeping role of transgressive discourses; the creation of digitally enabled protest networks that facilitated mass mobilization and claims diffusion; and the intensification of protest policing that provoked a departure from reformist to revolutionary claims. The argument offered here shows similarities to but also nuanced differences from the repression literature and casts doubt on the assumptions about the demobilizing impact of autocratization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bei der Lesung seines 'Schelmenromans' Die Insel des zweiten Gesichts vor der Gruppe 47 wurde der Exilant Albert Vigoleis Thelen 1953 massiv ob seines 'Emigrantendeutsch' kritisiert. Nur sechs Jahre später wurde die Lesung von Günter Grass' Blechtrommel zu einem fulminanten Erfolg, obwohl der Roman derselben Gattung zuzurechnen ist. Dieser Beitrag geht vor dem Hintergrund der Abwertung Thelens der Frage nach, welche Gründe für diese unterschiedlichen Bewertungen auszumachen sind und inwieweit Thelen Grass beeinflusst hat. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the early 2000s, governments in many Western democracies have introduced policies and practices to prevent radicalization and violent extremism (PRVE). This has led to the formation of a new policy arena in which an increased number of actors are tasked with PRVE work. The diverse set of actors and methods involved affect social movements in new and complex ways, but also challenges the established knowledge and analytical focus of research on the repression of social movements. In this article, we propose a conceptual framework that attends to the causes, content and consequences of protest control. We use it to examine interaction between actors in the PRVE arena and to highlight issues that are underexplored in repression research. To elucidate these issues, we use empirical examples from our own research on measures to counter extremist milieus in the Nordic countries and the UK. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How does exposure to government repression shape bystander willingness to mobilize into a protest or demonstration? A robust body of scholarship has argued that repression can backfire, motivating activists to take to the streets after the government clamps down. Yet, while the evidence is strong that highly motivated and risk-acceptant citizens are willing to step up, less is known about how repression affects the majority of citizens who do not frequently participate in protests. Yet, theories of civil resistance often depend on mobilizing bystanders. I examine this by drawing on geocoded survey data as well as incident-level data of repression across Africa. I measure each respondent's exposure to government repression across multiple spatial and temporal buffers. Contrary to expectations in the civil resistance literature, I find that exposure to repression correlates with a lower willingness to consider joining a protest or demonstration. The closer a respondent is, both temporally and spatially, to an incident of repression, the less likely they are to report that they would consider joining a protest. The results are robust to additional testing specifications that address issues of endogeneity, social desirability bias, and omitted variable bias. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public opinion polls conducted over the past five years point to a downward trend in African citizens' support for civil society and media freedoms. This is despite the flourishing of civil society and media actors as well as the expansion of democracy on the continent in the post-Cold War period. What explains this downward trend in public support? We use cross-national polling data from the Afrobarometer survey to examine the decline in public support for freedoms of association and media between 2011 and 2018 in the African context, a continent that has experienced decades of democratization waves and pressure. Using a multilevel statistical modelling approach, we analyse the influence of government repression of civil society and media actors on citizen support for enhanced government control over freedoms of association and the media. Our study shows that the government's repressive actions against civil society and media actors increases the probability that citizens will support control over association and media freedoms. Concerningly, this suggests government clampdowns on democratic rights influences the African publics to support such clampdowns, potentially legitimizing them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The repression-protest nexus in authoritarian regimes has attracted scholarly attention of contention scholars for a long time. However, studies have generally overlooked pro-government actors' role in contentious dynamics. This article introduces an original event dataset on protests, repression, and pro-government rallies in Turkey under the rule of the Justice and Development Party during a period in which authoritarianism has increased in intensity. Using protest event analysis, this dataset includes actions of governments, pro-government actors, and dissidents hand-coded from two newspapers between 1 January 2013, and 31 December 2016. The dataset enables researchers to study pro-government rallies (PGRs), anti-government protests, and state actions during a heightened period of contention in Turkey. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses 15-M and anti-austerity mobilizations in Spain from the perspective of repression and penalization. The literature has paid a great deal of attention to the consequences of this cycle of protest in relation to the quality of democratic participation and governance; it could be argued that the 15-M movement has raised the standards for key aspects of Spanish democracy. In articulating new counter-hegemonic claims, however, 15-M mobilizations have created an opportunity for new forms of repression. Drawing on criminology, socio-legal studies, and mobilization literature, we argue that this cycle of protest has been penalized. This involves a combination of technologies of repression that include invasive policing, securitization, and criminalization. Penalization needs to be seen as a dissent-suppressing mechanism, a negative response by political authorities and private actors that thrives when societies suffer from widespread anxieties about insecurity and crime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article demonstrates why collective action remains a rare phenomenon among French racial minorities. Three factors – at individual, organizational and institutional level – have been identified. First, the investigation reveals that despite feelings of racial injustice and identification expressed more frequently than previous research had indicated, French minorities demonstrate a strong mistrust of politics and collective action, distracting them from civic engagement. Then, the study over several years of eleven antiracist collectives in six cities indicates that their dominant repertoire of action is out of tune with the targeted public, mostly working-class. Finally, antiracist NGOs are subject to soft repression and channelling by institutions, which explains activists' tactical choices, but limits their mobilization potential. This article is based on a survey comprising 160 semi-directive interviews with a diverse panel of French racial minorities and the ethnographic follow-up over several years of eleven antiracist collectives in six working-class towns in France. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The threat of continued violence is a primary concern in post-conflict societies. This article contributes to the literature on post-conflict violence by analyzing a specific phenomenon that has characterized Colombia since the signing of the 2016 peace agreement: the assassination of social leaders. Building on explanations that emphasize state weakness, illicit economies, and the role of illegal armed actors, we argue that the assassination of social leaders also responds to efforts by local elites to sustain local competitive authoritarian orders in the face of bottom-up threats to their power by sociopolitical actors mobilized around the local implementation of the peace agreement. Using a cross-sectional dataset of Colombian municipalities, we find that assassinations of social leaders are more likely and more frequent in municipalities with intermediate levels of party fragmentation and low levels of voter turnout—that is, in municipalities with restricted electoral competition. Furthermore, a higher share of votes for leftist parties, which signals the presence of challengers to local elites, correlates with a higher probability and a higher number of assassinations. Overall, this article suggests that the nature of local political orders constitutes a key dimension shaping the micro-dynamics of violence and repression in post-conflict contexts. La amenaza de la continuación de la violencia es una de las principales preocupaciones en las sociedades en posconflicto. Este artículo contribuye a la literatura sobre la violencia en el posconflicto analizando un fenómeno específico que ha caracterizado a Colombia desde la firma del acuerdo de paz de 2016: el asesinato de líderes sociales. Partiendo de las explicaciones que enfatizan la debilidad del Estado, las economías ilícitas y el papel de los actores armados ilegales, argumentamos que el asesinato de líderes sociales también responde a los esfuerzos de las élites locales para sostener los órdenes autoritarios competitivos locales frente a las amenazas a su poder por parte de los actores sociopolíticos movilizados en torno a la implementación local del acuerdo de paz. Utilizando un conjunto de datos de municipios colombianos, observamos que los asesinatos de líderes sociales son más probables y más frecuentes en municipios con niveles intermedios de fragmentación partidista y bajos niveles de participación electoral, es decir, en municipios con competencia electoral restringida. Además, se correlaciona una mayor proporción de votos a los partidos de izquierda, un indicador de la presencia de contendientes a las élites locales, con una mayor probabilidad de que ocurran asesinatos, así como un mayor número de casos. Como conclusión, este artículo sugiere que la naturaleza de los órdenes políticos locales constituye una dimensión clave que determina las microdinámicas de la violencia y la represión en contextos de posconflicto. Le risque de la poursuite des violences est une préoccupation majeure dans les sociétés post-conflit. Cet article contribue à la littérature sur la violence post-conflit en analysant un phénoméne spécifique qui caractérise la Colombie depuis la signature de l'accord de paix de 2016 : l'assassinat de leaders sociaux. En s'appuyant sur des explications qui mettent l'accent sur la faiblesse de l'État, les économies illicites et le rôle des acteurs armés illégaux, nous soutenons que l'assassinat des leaders sociaux répond également aux efforts des élites locales pour maintenir des ordres autoritaires compétitifs locaux face aux menaces à leur pouvoir de la part des acteurs sociopolitiques mobilisés autour de la mise en œuvre locale de l'accord de paix. En utilisant des données provenant de municipalités colombiennes, nous constatons que les assassinats de leaders sociaux sont plus probables et plus fréquents dans les municipalités où la concurrence électorale est limitée. En outre, une part plus importante de votes pour les partis de gauche, un indicateur de la présence de concurrents (challengers) aux élites locales, est corrélée à une plus grande probabilité d'assassinats, ainsi qu'à un nombre plus élevé de cas. En conclusion, cet article suggére que la nature des ordres politiques locaux constitue une dimension clé déterminant la micro-dynamique de la violence et de la répression dans les contextes post-conflit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has become orthodox to read Nietzsche as proposing the 'sublimation' of troublesome behavioural impulses. On this interpretation, he is said to denigrate the elimination of our impulses, preferring that we master them by pressing them into the service of our higher goals. My thesis is that this reading of Nietzsche's conception of self-cultivation does not bear scrutiny. Closer examination of his later thought reveals numerous texts that show him explicitly recommending an eliminatory approach to self-cultivation. I invoke his theory of the will to power in order to explain why he persistently valorises both elimination and sublimation as preconditions of healthy subjective unity. I conclude that which of these two approaches he recommends in a given situation depends on whether or not the impulse in question can be put to use within the overall economy of our drives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates how different targets of state-sanctioned arrests shape the likelihood of collective action. We hypothesize that leader arrests are especially likely to result in backlash protests. Leader arrests symbolize the suppression of social collectives, they create collective grievances, and constitute focal points for mobilization. Building on a global sample of arrests of cultural identity group members, we qualitatively traced for each arrest whether it sparked a backlash protest. Drawing on coarsened exact matched models, we find that protests are significantly more likely following leader arrests. In contrast, mass arrests are not significantly linked to backlash protests. Additional tests show that organizational membership does not drive this findings, whereas the symbolic value of leaders is linked to protest outbreaks. Our findings cast doubt on the narrow focus on quasi-constant structural variables and make the case for the disaggregation of repression and the importance of triggering events. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]