Repression and Dissent around a Potential Critical Juncture
Panel data evidence from Zimbabwe: A Discussion with Adrienne LeBas and Lauren Young
This interview with Adrienne LeBas (American University) and CEGA affiliate Lauren Young (UC Davis) is part one of a two-part interview series with CEGA affiliates who presented at the 2020 annual meeting of the Empirical Studies of Conflict (ESOC). Every year, ESOC brings together scholars of political violence from across the country to examine the economics of conflict, including crime and policing, refugees, civil war, and foreign intervention.
Below, LeBas and Young describe their research focusing on when and why citizens overcome the fear of repression to challenge authoritarian states, as well as their career trajectory and professional motivations. These interviews are excerpts from a larger piece that was originally prepared and published by the UC Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation.
Q. What’s the problem you’re trying to solve?
A. Authoritarian regimes often use repression against their citizens, but social scientists have an imperfect understanding of how repression affects political behavior. Repression sometimes inhibits protest, either by inducing fear or raising the costs of organization. Under some conditions, though, repression strengthens citizens’ resolve and makes protest more likely. Our research sheds light on how information, citizens’ understanding of the likelihood of repression, and the actions of others affect their willingness to express dissent. This helps us better understand when and why citizens overcome the fear of repression and challenge authoritarian states.
Q. Describe your research.
A. We use face-to-face surveys and WhatsApp-implemented phone surveys to track individual attitudes during the critical July 2018 general elections in Zimbabwe. These elections — the first since the ouster of Robert Mugabe — were characterized by a more open period of campaigning and seemed to be an indicator of political opening. Yet the military opened fire on protesters the day after the election, and a state campaign of repression followed. Our unique panel data allows us to observe how ordinary citizens updated their views on repression and willingness to express dissent in real-time.
Q. What have you learned?
A. We find that exposure to both repression and protest by others increased citizens’ willingness to engage in protest and other acts of dissent. This suggests that repression is not as effective a tool in dissuading protest as conventional wisdom suggests. Though exposure to repression does induce fear and other mobilization-dampening emotions, it also generates emotional responses that favor mobilization. Our research suggests that citizens’ exposure to both repression and dissent by others makes them feel more positive toward opposition actors, an effect that is particularly potent for those who were previously less politically committed. Repression and protest lay the groundwork for further confrontation by increasing levels of political polarization among ordinary citizens.
Q. What led you to become political scientists?
Lebas: Initially planned to be an agronomist. While working in a lab on fungal control of rice pests as an undergrad, I learned that access to inputs and new technology was a deeply political problem. I did coursework in economics and political science, and eventually went to graduate school in political science, because I was interested in how transnational actors and political institutions impact the success of policies to redress food insecurity and poverty. [LeBas]
Young: I had planned to work in humanitarian assistance, but I decided to do a social science PhD after getting the chance to run a survey in northern Liberia as an intern for an international NGO. I loved the process of doing a survey — traveling in close quarters with a team of researchers, trying to get inside someone else’s life experience — and developed a better understanding of just how little evidence policymakers usually have when designing policies to alleviate violent conflict. [Young]
Q. Why do you care about this stuff?
A. In many circumstances, citizens participate in collective action despite significant risks. We tend to avoid normative judgments in the social sciences, and often view decisions as the outcomes of structural forces. At a human level, though, we have to recognize that participation in collective action can be quite brave and prosocial. The fact that we still don’t have a sufficient model of how and when it works is also motivating at an intellectual level. We also both conducted fieldwork in Zimbabwe during periods of state-sponsored violence and economic crisis, and these experiences shaped our research and made us more committed to understanding popular mobilization and political change.
