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State Violence and Oppositional Protest in High-Capacity Authoritarian Regimes

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International Journal of Conflict and Violence 6(1):55-74

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San Diego State University

This examination of the mobilization-repression nexus in high-capacity authoritarian regimes draws on examples from China, Russia, Iran, and several Middle Eastern states to develop a framework for analyzing state violence and how political oppositions are organized. The study examines middle and low levels of state violence, the provincial and municipal organization of party and regime, and the police, private militias, and thugs as low-level enforcers, and focuses on: (1) the complexity of the state's apparatus of repression and control and how different levels exercise different forms of violence against activists; (2) the creativity of the opposition's actions to voice its demands and avoid repression and surveillance; and (3) the recursive relationship between the two, a dark dance between state and opposition with high stakes for both. Hierarchical analysis at national, provincial, and local levels, and lateral analysis across these levels, where elite interests frequently diverge, show that intersections and gaps on both axes can create lapses in social control and openings the opposition. These free spaces of speech and innovative action give rise to novel ways to keep oppositional sentiments in the public forum. The article offers several propositions for analyzing repression and state violence at various levels, and, similarly, the various ways that these free spaces occur.

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ISSN: 1864–1385

State Violence and Oppositional Protest in

High-Capacity Authoritarian Regimes

Hank Johnston, Department of Sociology, San Diego State University, United States

urn:nbn:de:0070-ijcv-2012143

IJCV: Vol. 6 (1) 2012, pp. 55 – 74

Vol. 6 (1) 2012

Editorial (p. 3)

Guest Editorial: Processes of Radicalization and De-Radicalization Donatella Della Porta / Gary LaFree

(pp. 4 – 10)

Political Commitment under an Authoritarian Regime: Professional Associations and the Islamist

Movement as Alternative Arenas in Jordan Pénélope Larzillière (pp. 11 – 25)

Between a Rock and a Hard Place: Radical Islam in Post-Suharto Indonesia Felix Heiduk (pp. 26 – 40)

Electing Not to Fight: Elections as a Mechanism of Deradicalisation after the Irish Civil War

1922–1938 Bill Kissane (pp. 41 – 54)

State Violence and Oppositional Protest in High-Capacity Authoritarian Regimes Hank Johnston

(pp. 55 – 74)

The States Must Be Crazy: Dissent and the Puzzle of Repressive Persistence Christian Davenport /

Cyanne Loyle (pp. 75 – 95)

Intra-Party Dynamics and the Political Transformation of Non-State Armed Groups Véronique Dudouet

(pp. 96 – 108)

Neo-liberal Governing of “Radicals”: Danish Radicalization Prevention Policies and Potential

Iatrogenic Effects Lasse Lindekilde (pp. 109 – 125)

Internal and External Collective Memories of Conflicts: Israel and the 1948 Palestinian Exodus

Rafi Nets-Zehngut (pp. 126 – 140)

Cool Minds in Heated Debates? Migration-related Attitudes in Germany Before and After a Natural

Intervention Claudia Diehl / Jan-Philip Steinmann (pp. 141 – 162)

Focus:

Radicalization and

Deradicalization

Open Section

IJCV : Vol. 6 (1) 2012, pp. 55 – 74

Hank Johnston: State Violence and Oppositional Protest 56

State Violence and Oppositional Protest in

High-Capacity Authoritarian Regimes

Hank Johnston, Department of Sociology, San Diego State University, United States

This examination of the mobilization-repression nexus in high-capacity authoritarian regimes draws on examples from China, Russia, Iran, and several Middle

Eastern states to develop a framework for analyzing state violence and how political oppositions are organized. The study examines middle and low levels of

state violence, the provincial and municipal organization of party and regime, and the police, private militias, and thugs as low-level enforcers, and focuses on:

(1) the complexity of the state’s apparatus of repression and control and how different levels exercise different forms of violence against activists; (2) the cre-

ativity of the opposition’s actions to voice its demands and avoid repression and surveillance; and (3) the recursive relationship between the two, a dark

dance between state and opposition with high stakes for both. Hierarchical analysis at national, provincial, and local levels, and lateral analysis across these

levels, where elite interests frequently diverge, show that intersections and gaps on both axes can create lapses in social control and openings the opposition.

These free spaces of speech and innovative action give rise to novel ways to keep oppositional sentiments in the public forum. The article offers several prop-

ositions for analyzing repression and state violence at various levels, and, similarly, the various ways that these free spaces occur.

In the late 1980s, Chechen nationalism was moderate, fo-

cusing on democratic reforms, cultural traditions, and

bringing to light the history of Soviet repression. But in the

early 1990s, sectors of the movement proposed a separatist

agenda (Bohlen 1991). In the late summer of 1991, just a

few months after the attempted coup d’etat by communist

hardliners in the Moscow, a newly elected Chechen govern-

ment began to take steps towards independence. The Rus-

sian state responded by invading the region with great

brutality in winter 1994–95. Russian planes bombed the

capital of Grozny, and towns and villages suspected of

being rebel strongholds were razed. Households with young

males who might support the insurgency were terrorized

(Gall and de Wall 1998; Dunlop 1998). This first war was

fought to a stalemate, but in October 1999 Russia again in-

vaded with overwhelming military power. What remained

of Grozny had been turned into a wasteland by December

(Hughes 2007, 113; see also Tishkof 2004; German 2003).

The indiscriminate and widespread use of force against the

civilian population has been called genocidal, especially

“indiscriminate bombardment and well-documented cases

of massacres” (Hughes 2007: 161). Putin’s promise to

“waste them to the shithouse” was fulfilled, and offers an

earthy description of one way that state violence can occur

– military action decided by high-level state elites.

Contemporary Russia gives us another example of state vi-

olence, but this time occurring at a lower analytical level.

Mikhail Beketov, editor of a local newspaper in Khimki, a

suburb of Moscow, had written often about the corruption

of local officials, and had been warned to stop. In spring,

2008 he called for the resignation of the city’s leadership,

and a few days later a bomb destroyed his car (Levy 2010).

Shortly thereafter, he was attacked leaving his home. The

beating was so savage that his leg and several fingers had to

be amputated. Brain injuries were so severe that he can

barely utter simple sentences to this day. Although police

promised a thorough investigation, the case remains un-

solved. According to one observer:

These types of attacks or other means of intimidation, including

aggressive efforts by prosecutors to shut down news media out-

IJCV : Vol. 6 (1) 2012, pp. 55 – 74

Hank Johnston: State Violence and Oppositional Protest 57

lets or nonprofit groups, serve as unnerving deterrents. And in a

few cases, in recent years the violence in the country has escala-

ted into contract killings. Corruption is widespread in Russia,

and government often functions poorly. But most journalists

and nonprofit groups shy away from delving deeply into these

problems. (Levy 2010, A4)

They shy away because violence by state agents is a palpable

reality. Other reporters and editors have been beaten and/

or arrested on inflated charges. In the extreme, they have

been murdered by contract killers. Anna Politkovskaya’s as-

sassination in 2006 is widely known, but there have been

numerous others. One plausible estimate holds that over

one hundred newspaper reporters and editors have been

murdered since 2000 (Levy 2010).

This article develops a rubric for analyzing state violence at

various levels, and, similarly, the various dimensions by

which political opposition is organized. It offers pre-

liminary rumination on the richness and diversity of

political oppositions that builds on a small literature on

“micromobilization” and “dissident networks” (Opp and

Roehl 1990; Opp and Gern 1993; Johnston 2005) and,

similarly, on a literature on the states’ multileveled efforts

at social control (Ferree 2005; White and White 1995; Car-

ley 1997). It offers, in part, a contrast to approaches that

see the protest mobilization-repression nexus as more or

less straightforward reflections of costs, benefits, oppor-

tunities and thresholds for action. Approaching this goal

from a broad comparative perspective of several different

authoritarian states, I focus on three dimensions relevant

to levels and forms of state violence: (1) the complexity of

state’s apparatus of repression and control and how dif-

ferent levels exercise variable forms of violence against ac-

tivists, either to shut down protests or to prevent them

from materializing through fear and intimidation; (2) the

creativity of the opposition’s actions to voice its demands

and avoid repression and surveillance; and (3) the recursive

and iterative relationship between the two, a dark dance

between state and opposition with high stakes for both.

First, regarding the state, I argue that its repressive violence

is best conceptualized according to a hierarchy of repressive

administration. This includes, not just national-level mili-

tary or security-force repression, as in Chechen case, or in

Syria throughout 2011 and 2012, but also personal-level

thuggery against reporters, dissidents, and vocal citizens, as

in the Russian example, or as commonly reported by Egyp-

tian activists before Murbarak’s fall, or today, by Chinese ac-

tivists regularly. Additionally, I will specify a middle-range

of state violence at the provincial level by party officials and

administrators, by police and private militias, and by vari-

ous other security organs. A further factor in the adminis-

tration of social control is that at each of these levels, there

are competing elite interests, which can create openings and

even hidden allies for the opposition. While theorists of the

modern bureaucratic state will find these observations

about administrative levels noncontroversial, this article

makes an original contribution by applying it to questions

of social control and mobilization. State repression, is not a

monolithic affair captured wholly by aggregate measures of

police budgets, size of security apparatus, or protester

deaths and injuries, but rather can be fruitfully analyzed

both hierarchically at different levels and laterally, across

these levels, where elite interests frequently diverge. Inter-

sections and gaps on both axes can create lapses in social

control and openings for the opposition.

The second dimension focuses on the opposition and how

it takes advantage of these complexities of repressive ad-

ministration. I will discuss the practicalities of social con-

trol in a particular kind of repressive state, high-capacity

authoritarian regimes (or HCAs), and how it can never be

complete precisely because of the scope and complexity of

state administration. This creates free spaces for the politi-

cal opposition that similarly occur at national, regional,

and local levels. These free spaces are forums of speech

and innovative action that give rise to novel ways to keep

oppositional sentiments in the public forum. Rather than

visions of crushing totalitarian fear and preference falsifi-

cation (Kuran 1992), I will discuss the wellsprings of free-

dom and creativity that sometimes exist in modern

authoritarian states. These “weapons of the weak” were

chronicled by James Scott (1985, 1990), in his ground-

breaking research on peasant societies. This article makes

an original contribution by identifying several forms they

take in modern HCAs (high-capacity authoritarianisms)

to circumvent repression and keep oppositional senti-

ments alive.

IJCV : Vol. 6 (1) 2012, pp. 55 – 74

Hank Johnston: State Violence and Oppositional Protest 58

The third focus combines the first two, following Tilly’s call

(2003) to understand collective violence in dynamic terms.

I highlight how state violence occurs in an ongoing and re-

cursive relationship with the opposition at the different le-

vels of its organization. I conclude by suggesting that mid-

and microlevels of social organization both of the opposi-

tion and the state – often overlooked by quantitative

studies of the mobilization-repression nexus – play key

roles in state-oppositional dynamics. I have in mind (1)

how the diversity of social control apparatus means that

the opposition sometimes finds occasional allies within it;

and (2) how the widespread official corruption that char-

acterizes these regimes at all levels is especially relevant at

the local level. In general, I suggest that the gap between of-

ficial ideology and the corruption that permeates HCAs

animates the opposition through resentment and anger at

hundreds of daily insults in the arena of daily life. As news,

not only of daily injustices but also acts of protest and re-

sistance, diffuse by word of mouth preference falsification

and fear are mitigated, keeping alive oppositional senti-

ments in public opinion. The complexity of HCAs means

that citizens are not completely quiescent, but rather they

are very careful who they talk to.

This article takes a first step in thinking systematically

about how this multileveled complexity affects the rela-

tionship between state repression and oppositional mobi-

lization. It offers a framework for a more fine-grained

analysis of state violence and its causes. Mark Lichbach

once lamented, “Why have scholars theorized and reported

that all possible curves fit the impact of repression on dis-

sent?” (1987, 293). This article will show that part of the

answer lies, on the one hand, in missing the complexity of

repressive apparatus and, on the other, a failure to appre-

hend the creativity of the opposition. The article offers sev-

eral propositions to serve as benchmarks for analysts of a

more midlevel orientation to state violence, and concludes

by suggesting how recognition of these gaps in theory

might affect how researchers model the mobilization-re-

pression relationship in the future.

1. State Violence and Mobilization

Research on state violence and protest mobilization has

failed to produce a general model that consistently fits the

variety of trajectories and outcomes. Early research sug-

gested a point in the application of state violence beyond

which citizen frustration and aggression erupts, an implicit

point of proportionality where repression begins to incite

protest rather than quell it (Davies 1969; Feierabend and

Feierabend 1962; Gurr 1970). Before that point, increasing

repression tends to have a negative effect on protest levels

because it raises the costs of participation. After that point,

backlash occurs against the brutality of the regime’s re-

sponse. This is a model that is more applicable to auth-

oritarian states and non-democracies because it presumes

the state’s willingness to escalate violence as needed, with-

out concern for legality or human rights. For a repressive

regime, knowing where this point lies is important because

it informs “the dictator’s dilemma” (Francisco 2005), the

question of how much repression is necessary to quell dis-

sent without provoking reactive backlash – a dilemma

faced by the al-Assad regime in Syria 2012.

Subsequent research provided evidence for a completely

opposite relationship, namely, that low levels of state viol-

ence are linked with political opportunities that mitigate

protest mobilization. This is a model more appropriate to

relatively open and democratic regimes. In this view, low

repression corresponds with the availability of institutional

channels for claim-making, which alleviate the need for

extrainstitutional protest. As repression increases, in-

stitutional opportunities close and protest increases, but

here too, only up to a threshold, which marks the point at

which costs become too high. A line of deterrence is cross-

ed, after which state violence increasingly inhibits protest

mobilization. Several studies support the operation of a

line of deterrence, not only in open political regimes but

also where state violence was increasing: in France and

England (Tilly, Tilly, and Tilly 1975), Northern Ireland

(White and White 1995), South Africa (Olivier 1991), and

Germany (Opp and Roehl 1990).

One reason for these inconsistent findings is that studies

often combine different types of state regime, which is why

this article focuses on HCAs only. Another reason is that

aggregate measures of state violence are more reflective of

system characteristics such as police expenditures or size of

the armed forces than of the various forms of state violence

IJCV : Vol. 6 (1) 2012, pp. 55 – 74

Hank Johnston: State Violence and Oppositional Protest 59

(Koopmans 1997, 152–53), which is why this article ex-

plores middle-range and microlevel data to make com-

parisons among state actions. Several scholars argue that it

is not only the intensity but also the form of repression

that affects mobilization, and it is plausible that the same

goes for the form of oppositional actions. Opp and Roehl

(1990) differentiate between legitimate and illegitimate

protest, with the defining criteria resting on tactics and

legality. White and White (1995) point out that, even in

Western democracies, it is incorrect to assume that all re-

pression occurs within legal parameters. They trace “infor-

mal” repression in Northern Ireland that is typically

carried out by rogue individuals or circles within the po-

lice. In the United States, Carley (1995) draws upon gov-

ernment records about the American Indian Movement to

trace covert repression.

But also, there is the view that the repression-protest rela-

tionship embraces too many variables, too much dynamic

monitoring of opponents, and too complex temporal and

spatial variations to be captured by a single model. Rasler

(1996) and Kurzman (1996) both point out that the mere

perception of an opportunity – one that may not objec-

tively exist – can spur action, demand sacrifices, encourage

small victories, and thereby create new openings. Groups

can be dispersed spatially (Rasler 1996) and they can

cluster by risk-taking orientation (Karklins and Peterson

1993). Similarly, the opposition has a repertoire of protest

actions, between violence and nonviolence (Lichbach 1987;

Moore 1998), between direct and indirect action, between

overt protest and unobtrusive actions.

Because a great deal of research about the repression-

mobilization relationship relies on modeling of aggregate

data, it misses much of the “cultural work” of resistance

and opposition (Scott 1985, 1990; Melucci 1985, 1989). Re-

search in the field of social movements has long recognized

the importance of behind-the-scenes activities in move-

ment development: Morris identifies “movement halfway

houses” in the U.S. civil rights movement (1982), Mueller

refers to “cultural laboratories” in the women’s movement

(1994), and Fantasia and Hirsch discuss “spatial preserves”

in Islamist movements (1995). The more widely used con-

cept in this literature is free spaces, which describes gather-

ing places outside direct surveillance of the state where new

ideas can be voiced and put into practice (Polletta 1999).

These are safe havens that mitigate the costs of par-

ticipation and offer subtle and satisfying selective incen-

tives to participants. As I will suggest, it is in the cracks of

civil life created by the complex organization of HCAs

where free spaces can flourish.

2. State Capacity and Violence

Regarding variations in state regimes, scholars have classi-

fied repressive states on various dimensions, the most im-

portant being the extent of state capacity, size of repressive

apparatus, and legitimacy – or lack thereof. At the pole of

extreme repressiveness, totalitarian states (such as North

Korea, Belarus, and Tajikstan) are characterized by ongoing

monitoring and social control through a highly developed

police apparatus, strong ideological socialization, and con-

tinual ideological propagandizing. These are tasks that

require an extensive mobilization capacity and continual

internal monitoring of both state institutions and daily so-

cial life. Such resource-intensive tasks are characteristic of

high levels of state capacity. More common are extremely

repressive states that have lower capacity, sometimes la-

beled sultanistic regimes, a term introduced by Max Weber

(1968), and elaborated by Linz and Stepan (1996; see also

Linz and Cheabi 1998). These regimes rest on the auto-

cratic rule of a supreme leader. They are dictatorships

based on plunder and personalism, which are common in

less developed states. State administration is concentrated

in a small circle dependent on the supreme leader’s benefi-

cence. The forces of social control are his instruments of

rule and enrichment, as was the case in Nicaragua under

Somoza, Iran under the Shah Pahlavi, Romania under

Ceausescu, or Uganda under Amin.

Authoritarian states tend to navigate a course between

these two extremes. They offer more areas of freedom to

their citizens and tend to be quite stable because they enjoy

greater legitimacy. In contrast to Linz’s early character -

ization of authoritarian states as having limited capacity

and an underdeveloped state ideology (1964), it is fair to

say that a more common contemporary pattern is extensive

state development and greater degrees of legitimacy, for

example, in one-party authoritarian states such as Mexico

IJCV : Vol. 6 (1) 2012, pp. 55 – 74

Hank Johnston: State Violence and Oppositional Protest 60

before 1996, Argentina in the 1960s, or Venezuela today.

There may actually be a modicum of political pluralism

either in the form of permitted dissent (within bounds)

among ruling party members or the existence of window-

dressing parties with a handful of seats in rubber-stamp

legislatures. One-party authoritarianisms use local party

and union leaders who deliver the vote by distributing fa-

vors to the grassroots – especially employment – in return

for support. These kinds of authoritarian states tend to be

more stable than military authoritarianisms (Geddes

1999). Pluralism may be reflected in differences of opinion

within bureaucratic agencies, for example when leaders rely

on economic experts to guide modernization policies

(O’Donnell 1973). Pluralism may also play a limited role in

institutional development outside the state, such as the

Catholic Church in communist Poland or in Francoist

Spain. In these cases, the authoritarian state was unable to

completely co-opt the church because of strong public

opinion, and thus local churches became free spaces,

mostly outside state control.

In this article I focus on high-capacity authoritarian re-

gimes (HCAs), such as China, Russia, Iran, Mexico before

democratization, and Egypt before the fall of Mubarak.

Among the states that I will discuss, the degree of state ca-

pacity will vary, but only slightly, and will be noted when

its effects are significant. The state capacity of China and

Russia is very great, but it is lower in Syria, for example,

where elements of state administration reflect more sult-

anistic and/or personalistic patterns based on family, tribal,

and communal ties.

Many aspects of HCAs are well known. Those that are most

relevant to my analysis can be summarized as follows:

1. One-party rule. Meaningful political participation is li-

mited to one party. If present, opposition parties are

more a symbolic gesture to a façade of democracy than

any substantive reflection of competing interests. In

Egypt, for example, support for “opposition parties”

paled in contrast to the ruling National Democratic

Party, which gained 88 percent of the vote in November

2010. Façade parties, such as the Wafd Party, the Leftist

Unionist Party, and the Arab-Nasserite Party, among

others, divided the remaining seats between them. The

largest opposition, the Muslim Brotherhood, was illegal

and outside the electoral process, although its candi-

dates ran as independents. There is a sense that

members of these opposition parties are complicit in

authoritarian rule, yet when the opposition mobilizes,

they often play key roles.

2. Centralization of governance. One dimension of this sec-

ond characteristic flows from the first, namely, that

party structure is often blurred or overlaps with state

administrative functions. A second dimension is that

legislative and judicial functions are subordinated to the

executive institutions of the one-party state. The on-

going erosion of the independent judiciary in Venezuela

by placing members of Chavez’s Bolivarian Party in re-

gional and local judgeships is an example. Regarding the

military, its degree of independence varies according to

different historical and regional contexts. In some states

there may be a strong overlap with party membership,

as has occurred in Venezuela too, as a result of con-

scious policy by Chavez to ensure the loyalty of com-

manders. In Egypt, the military maintained a degree of

independence through geopolitical ties with the U.S.

and through its involvement in profit-making enter-

prises. Recent regime changes in Egypt and Tunisia

demonstrate how destabilizing military independence

from state and party can be.

3. Media control. HCAs seek to limit and control those in-

stitutions that govern the flow of information to

citizens. Ministries of information and propaganda

manage the complex task of censoring news and com-

mentary, but, as I will discuss, the effectiveness of their

efforts is often a casualty of state administrative com-

plexity because newspapers and broadcast media are

often local or regional, and therefore harder to control.

4. Highly developed social control apparatus. Numerous le-

vels of police organization are common: a national,

state, and local police, state security forces, secret police,

networks of spies, special militias, and party enforcers.

These forces are distinct from the military as loci of the

means of violence in the authoritarian state, but the

military too is often divided into special units, elite divi-

sions, and republican guards chosen for loyalty to the

president. Finally, bands of thugs – often policemen and

IJCV : Vol. 6 (1) 2012, pp. 55 – 74

Hank Johnston: State Violence and Oppositional Protest 61

party members known for their brutality, physical in-

timidation, and violent efficiency – work as agents of

enforcement and fear, especially during states of emerg-

ency. It may be that they are organized more formally

into militias or vigilante groups to do the bidding of

economic and political elites ex jure.

5. Absence of citizen protections. The logical extension of a

highly developed police apparatus is the arbitrary use of

police powers. Surveillance, extrajudicial detentions, ca-

priciousness of enforcement, shakedowns, bribes, and

protection rackets are all common. Detentions, beat-

ings, harassment, incommunicado periods, torture, and,

in the extreme, disappearances, create fear among

family and loved ones that ripples through society. They

also drive the accumulation of collective grievances and

limit public forms of collective action – but encourage

unobtrusive forms among certain sectors of the public,

as I will discuss.

6. Political venality. More so than in democracies, there are

huge benefits at the upper echelons of authoritarian

states for economic and political elites who cooperate

with the state and ruling party. For those who are will-

ing to play the game within the rules of one-party con-

trol and forfeit principles of liberal democratic

governance, self-interest is a powerful stabilizing factor

at society’s upper levels of status and wealth, which

mitigates division among elites. At the lower levels of re-

gion, province, town, and municipality, the same logic is

at work on a smaller scale, creating opportunities for

sweetheart contracts, bribery, theft, real estate deals, and

shakedowns that impart a strong interest in the status

quo among local elites, and strong resentments among

the public, for whom the injustices of such schemes do

not go unnoticed.

7. Clientalism. The distribution of jobs, contracts, favors for

family members, and the social capital of connections

and status also become powerful tools for mitigating

political opposition. At the lower levels of state authority,

many citizens find employment in the state-controlled

sectors of the economy (state-owned industries), ad-

ministration (the various functions of the high-capacity

state, such as health, education, welfare), and social con-

trol apparatus (police and army). This creates a large

pool of citizens whose interests either lie with the status

quo or are complicated by various pulls and pressures in

different directions regarding political opposition.

3. Elite Divisions: Spaces for Corruption and Resistance

Research has long recognized that division among ruling

elites is a key factor in regime instability. To counter these

forces, HCAs offer strong economic incentives of self-

enrichment and enrichment of family members, both im-

mediate and extended. In the absence of threats to the

status quo, HCAs manage elite conflicts with the carrot of

economic benefits and the stick of party discipline. For es-

pecially egregious behaviors there is the threat of expulsion

and arrest. That such divisions occur frequently is noncon-

troversial among analysts, and is revealed especially in

times of regime instability and change, such as in Tunisia

in early 2011.

In January, 2011, Tunisian state and party leaders

scrambled to distance themselves from the authoritarian

rule of Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali in order to secure positions

in the new regime after huge popular protests forced him

to flee. Mohamed Ghanouchi was Ben Ali’s right-hand

man under the old regime. Despite challenges, Ghanouchi

was able to portray himself as a competent administrator

and technocrat and form a transitional cabinet. Other old-

regime insiders were not so successful, and were quickly ex-

pelled from the transitional government in response to

popular protests. Mouldi Jendoubi, the second-in-com-

mand of the Tunisian Trade Union, was at the forefront of

calls for further expulsions, even though he and other

union leaders both acquiesced to and benefited from their

relationships with the Ben Ali government. Their call for a

general strike to expunge party insiders from the new cabi-

net helped establish their credentials of oppositional mili-

tancy. These kinds of elite divisions are well-documented

mechanisms of opening opportunities for mobilization of

political oppositions (see McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly

2001). Polarization of elites is a fundamental criterion for

the development of revolutionary situations (Goodwin

2002). While sometimes studied regarding the im-

plementation and outcomes of protest (Amenta and

Zyman 1991; Amenta and Young 1999), elite divisions at

regional and local levels should also be considered in the

repression-mobilization nexus.

IJCV : Vol. 6 (1) 2012, pp. 55 – 74

Hank Johnston: State Violence and Oppositional Protest 62

As among national elites, competition and disagreement

occur frequently among regional and local administrators

too, both laterally and vertically. These divisions, both real

and potential, are important for two reasons when analyz-

ing state violence. First they create maneuvering room for

elites at various levels to enhance their power and pursue

self-enrichment, corruption, intimidation, and thuggery.

Second, they also provide room for free spaces in which the

developing opposition can take advantages of lapses in so-

cial control and enforcement, and play upon conflicting

elite interests to recruit allies. Although elite analysis at the

national level often takes precedence in the political and

social sciences – and remains crucial in analyzing political

instability and regime change – lapses of enforcement and

shifting alliances at less exalted levels also can have far-

reaching consequences, both for the developing opposition

and for the “prevailing strategies” of social control (Koop-

mans and Kriesi 1995).

A key focus in this article is that the local level is where

thousands of functionaries draw upon state and/or party

authority to augment their meager salaries. Just as the

upper echelons of power enrich themselves through land

deals, state contracts, and joint ventures, so too do local in-

spectors, municipal employees, policemen, party leaders,

union officials, and low-level bureaucrats, among others,

take petty bribes, shakedown street vendors and local busi-

nessmen, and pursue their own interests. The protests that

brought down the regime in Tunisia were precipitated pre-

cisely at this level, when a municipal inspector tried to con-

fiscate the fruit from Mohamed Bouazizi’s street-vending

cart in the city of Sidi Bouzid. Itinerant vendors were com-

monly harassed by police and inspectors, with the under-

standing that they either pay a bribe of ten dinars (five

euros, or several days’ wages), or run away and lose their

cart and stock (Fahim 2011). On December 17, 2010,

Bouazizi stood firm and was beaten by inspectors. His self-

immolation in protest precipitated the mass mobilizations

that toppled the Ben Ali regime.

It is typical of HCAs that claims and grievances about state

corruption accumulate nationally, regionally, and – perhaps

most importantly – locally. Most citizens, for most of the

time, experience the state at this level. And because of this,

the enrichissez-vous machinations of party elites in the capi-

tal, although far removed from quotidian experience, are

often talked about and are well known as examples of il-

legitimate and unjust governance. As a normal and ex-

pected part of daily existence, authoritarian corruption

rides on the complex division of labor of HCAs. When

examining the varieties of state violence, these small injus-

tices must be considered along with mobilization of the

military or deployment of the riot police. Yet, just as the de-

centralization of social control in HCAs permits these small

acts of violence, so too does it create interstices where the

opposition can take shape and grow in the form of free

spaces, again, especially at the local level.

These observations lead to three basic propositions about

HCAs, which will guide the discussion that follows:

Propostion 1. Oppositional ubiquity. HCAs contain intrinsic

spaces where opposition can develop, derived from the com-

plexity of the social control task.

Proposition 2. Oppositional creativity. The creativity of cer-

tain activists in HCAs can produce intrinsic spaces for the op-

position that reduce the associated risks.

Proposition 3. Oppositional motivation. The political venality

of HCAs fuels oppositional sentiments and drives the creativ-

ity and ubiquity of actions embodied in the first two proposi-

tions. Corruption at the local level is especially important for

fueling regime illegitimacy in the long term.

4. Opposition in HCAs: Unobtrusive and Ubiquitous

A large body of research about political and social move-

ments has firmly established that large mobilizations do

not emerge full-grown from the head of Zeus, but rather

come from preexisting mobilizing structures that serve as

the basis of organization (McCarthy and Zald 1977;

McAdam 1982, 1999; McAdam, McCarthy, and Zald, 1996;

Tarrow 1998). Most of these studies examine democratic

regimes, but cracks and lapses in the repressive apparatus

of HCAs suggest similar preorganization of grievance ar-

ticulation. For example, during the summer of 2011 as

Syrians confronted the al-Assad regime, their actions were

guided by local coordinating committees in all the major

IJCV : Vol. 6 (1) 2012, pp. 55 – 74

Hank Johnston: State Violence and Oppositional Protest 63

cities. Where did these groups spontaneously come from if

everyone had been living in quiescence among their

neighbors (Arsu and Stack 2011)? It is more likely that

they grew out of hidden networks of opposition, often

with ties with émigré activists, but primarily organized

and maintained within the small free spaces of the

repressive state.

My own field research in authoritarian states found that in

the Soviet Union, in Poland, in Mexico, and in Francoist

Spain, subterranean organizations of opposition, politi-

cized in varying degrees, commonly existed– indeed, were

permitted to exist – in the interstices of state administrative

complexity (Johnston 2005, 2006, 2011; Johnston and

Mueller 2001; Johnston and Taverna 2012). This principle

strongly parallels Scott’s classic analyses of repressive social

relations in traditional societies (1985, 1990). The existence

of informal, sometimes duplicitous oppositional groups

and organizations offers an alternative explanation for the

rapid mobilizations of “popular fronts” against the com-

munist Eastern Europe regimes. Rather than years of pent-

up frustration and preference falsification being unleashed

by external events, mass mobilizations grew out of pre-

existing networks among discontented citizens, who regu-

larly discussed – albeit carefully – how they were fed up

with the contradictions of “mature socialism,” with the

deficits of citizen freedom, with the small injustices of

everyday life, and the inequities of communist party domi-

nance.

In truth, HCAs never completely stamp out the opposition

(the key point of proposition one above). Nor are HCA

states single-actor monoliths with their agents marching in

lock-step to enforce social control. I base these observa-

tions on several projects (Johnston 2005, 2006, 2011),

whose findings can be summarized by the following obser-

vations: (1) Varieties of oppositional talk persist and are in-

deed quite common among particular networks of people

– a finding that strongly contrasts the observation that

“preference falsification” leads to political quiescence in re-

pressive regimes (Kuran 1992). (2) Talk is frequently or-

ganized in groups and organizations that often function

duplicitously, being public and often officially recognized,

but surreptitiously maintaining an oppositional ambiance

among members. Creative actors carve out free spaces

where they can take advantage of lapses in state surveil-

lance, call upon new allies within the state, and innovate

new tactics of opposition. (3) These networks of opposi-

tionists – who vary in the risks they are willing to take –

include outspoken dissidents and the members of their

circles, especially among writers and artists, as well as ordi-

nary citizens who resist the lack of freedom and react with

repugnance against official corruption. (4) These groups

and networks put pressure on the regime to democratize

and are also springboards of yet more forceful and open

oppositional activities once the regime takes steps to re-

form. (5) It is common for the free spaces these groups

carve out to exist in part through the complicity of state

agents who look the other way, or police who warn a sus-

pect rather than detaining him or her, or party officials

who choose not to report oppositional activities among

friends. In some cases, these state agents may privately har-

bor oppositional sentiments.

We can see the ubiquity of oppositional talk even in states

like North Korea, probably the closest example of a totali-

tarian state we have today. Despite intense cradle-to-grave

political indoctrination, media manipulation and mis-

information, widespread fear, xenophobic nationalism, Or-

wellian public discourse, and staged personality-cult

rituals, many North Koreans can still sift through the lies to

interpret self-interest. In late 2009 protests erupted when

the North Korean state announced a shock currency de-

valuation that wiped out the life savings of many citizens

(McNeil 2009; Demick 2010). People protested in the

streets of the capital, Pyongyang, and in rural towns and

villages (Li-Sun 2009), some setting fire to piles of now-

worthless old currency. Moreover, such protests are not

new. There were reports of protests by women against age

prohibitions for participation in local markets four years

ago. I have been told of jokes about Kim Il-Sung’s hairdo.

When Soviet archives were opened to researchers, it be-

came clear that the Stalinist terror was not monolithic

(Priestland 2007). Orders from Moscow were sometimes

ignored in the distant republics. Aspects of Stalin’s person-

ality cult were not accepted, and sometimes even mocked.

Some cases of low-level political dissent were identified

(Viola 2003).

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Hank Johnston: State Violence and Oppositional Protest 64

Recognizing that cracks in the repressive apparatus allow

oppositional talk to occur and groups to exist is a finding

with important implications for the mobilization-

repression nexus. Just as there are undercurrents of conflict

among political elites at different levels of administration,

so too are there undercurrents of opposition, but here

mostly at the local, quotidian level of life. Moreover, not

only do cracks and hiatuses in the repressive apparatus

allow activists to seize and construct free spaces, but covert

oppositional attitudes among elites may create oppor-

tunities. As one former Soviet censor reported to me, when

his bosses were on vacation he could let things pass. Some-

times it was friendship that made censors look the other

way – when they could get away with it. Other times, free

spaces existed because of the ineptitude or laziness of the

security forces. Activists reported leniency by the police be-

cause the opposition’s existence, to some extent, defined

the police role and gave them something to do. As such, the

game was afoot. More generally, this perspective suggests

that the prevailing strategy of an authoritarian state is at

least partly defined by its recognition of these free spaces.

Proposition 4. Free-space oppositions sometimes have low-

level allies within HCA regimes, either intentionally through

the actions of covert supporters, or unintentionally through

laziness or ineptitude of regime personnel. Although not nu-

merous, the impact of these “inside connections” is dispropor-

tionate to their number because they help oppositional

sentiments to remain in public consciousness during periods

of apparent quiescence.

5. The Scope and Form of Free Spaces

Many of the groups and organizations that constitute op-

position movements in HCAs are informally organized, less

overtly political in focus, and their actions often un-

obtrusive. However, other groups may be less surreptitious

and more formally organized, such as façade parties, which

are recognized and permitted to exist within limits to con-

vey the impression of political pluralism. One example lo-

cated towards the organized pole is the Muslim

Brotherhood, which by a decision as the national level op-

erated under a modus vivendi with the Mubarak regime.

The Brotherhood officially eschewed oppositional politics

and cultivated its free spaces in grassroots organization of a

social, charitable, and religious character. As long as it oper-

ated within these constraints it was able to avoid direct sup-

pression, although it was technically an illegal organization.

The Brotherhood had to practice careful political restraint

in arenas of civic discourse as a precondition of the free

spaces it enjoyed. For the regime, the risks of such a strat-

egy are that its security forces appear weak to the public be-

cause of the persistent and apparent contradiction between

what it says (the Brotherhood is an illegal, radical Islamist

organization) and what it does (turn the other way in the

interests of placating the 20 percent of the population that

support the organization). Another risk is that the organiz-

ation becomes a springboard for mobilization against the

regime should the context of opportunities and constraints

change. It is interesting that thirty years ago a similar strat-

egy was exercised by the communist regime in Poland re-

garding the Catholic Church, which was at the forefront of

early Solidarity mobilization. Unlike the Church, the

Brotherhood was slow to participate in the gathering op-

position in early 2011, and stayed away from street protests,

a position that it could not sustain as momentum grew.

Variability in state repression is also evident in China if we

compare the violent campaign against Falun Gong several

years ago with the blind-eye tolerance of house-church

Christianity (Vala and O’Brien 2007). Somewhere between

Beijing’s halls of power and enforcement by local party

cadres, one religious movement (Falun Gong, which seems

to be supremely apolitical) is more heavily repressed, while

the other, evangelical Christianity, encounters semi-toler-

ance in some locales (Vala and O’Brien 2007). Although

both are prohibited by the letter of the law, it seems that

many provincial officials see nonofficial Christianity as less

threatening than the vague spiritualism of Falun Gong. The

apparent contradiction of one being labeled a superstitious

throwback to pre-communist China and the other not

demonstrates the variability of enforcement at national

and local levels. Where national direction is less clear, en-

forcement risks mitigation by different perceptions of po-

tential threat and local interests, in this case, by lower-level

bureaucrats in the state and party apparatus. Not only does

the complexity of the state often lead to variable ap-

plication of repression, but complexity of perception and

interests, say, if a person’s parents are secret Christians,

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Hank Johnston: State Violence and Oppositional Protest 65

compounds it. Finally, there is also the issue of the how a

particular policy sphere, in this case state control of relig-

ious practice, is related to political opposition. Permitting

house-church worship by several dozen citizens is much

less threatening than, say, the organization of ethnic politi-

cal organizations in the Tibetan, Uyghur, and Mongolian

regions that challenge the territorial integrity of the state.

Prior to 2011, when protest tolerance decreased significant -

ly in the wake of the Arab Spring, this kind of selective re-

pression characterized China’s prevailing strategy. After the

2008 earthquake in Sichuan Province, which caused many

deaths among young children because of shoddy school

construction, a diverse and diffuse movement among

parents mobilized to demand compensation and account -

ability of local officials. In addition to the participants’ tra-

gedy of personal loss, many local party officials had

profited from building contracts where shortcuts and sub-

standard materials were used, deepening perceptions of in-

justice and lack of accountability. Provincial officials

allowed many of these protests to proceed, reflecting in

part the need to appear responsive to citizens’ demands

(and the “Olympics thaw”) – as long as they remain iso-

lated, specific, local, and did not challenge dominant politi-

cal alignments of state and party. Activists that passed these

thresholds were often beaten and arrested.

Proposition 5. Because perceived threat determines repressive le-

vels, there will be variability according to policy areas and claims

of protests. Repression can also vary by administrative level of

enforcement, creating temporary free spaces for movements.

Proposition five also applies to media control and limi-

tations on press freedoms, which in China are both heavy

and pervasive, but not hermetically sealed. On the one

hand, news of political turmoil is routinely repressed. Riots

in Lhasa or Urumqui find no space in Chinese dailies. The

Ministry of Propaganda sends out weekly lists of stories

that cannot be covered in print and broadcast media. Dur-

ing the 2011 popular mobilizations in Egypt, newspapers,

broadcast media, and internet in China were mute on the

subject (Wong and Barbosa 2011). On the other hand, the

complexity of social control means that censorship some-

times fails simply because of ineptitude. To take one

example, a classified advertisement appearing in the

Chengdu Evening News paid homage to the mothers who

lost children in the Tiananmen Square massacre. The

meaning of the ad slipped by the staff: “Saluting the strong

mothers of victims of 64” was its cryptic text. Six-four is

common shorthand for the repression on June 4 (6-4),

1989, when hundreds – perhaps thousands of students

were killed by the People’s Liberation Army. The ad-

vertisement referred to those few mothers who, despite an

absolute ban on speaking of the massacre, have continued

to call for an investigation. It seems that the young woman

who accepted the ad was unaware of the significance of the

“64” reference, and was told it was the date of a mining dis-

aster when she asked the person placing the ad. News of the

defiant ad went viral on the internet before censors were

able to intervene. The Ministry of Propaganda had the final

word, however, because three editors at the newspaper were

fired in retaliation.

As in other aspects of society, members of the media may

sometimes intentionally push the limits of tolerance. There

are always a few reporters and editors who are willing to

see how far they can go in pursuit of journalistic freedom.

In June 2010, Nanfang Dushi Bao (Southern Metropolis

Daily), a paper in the Pearl River Delta region known for

its provocative editorials and investigative journalism, pub-

lished a cartoon that also made veiled references the Tian-

anmen Square massacre. In one of several cartoons

commemorating International Children’s Day on June 1, a

blackboard image drawn by a child depicts a lone figure

standing in front of a line of tanks. The drawing echoes the

famous news video from 1989, in which a sole student pro-

tester attempts to block the advance of tanks towards the

square (see Figure 1). The cartoon was removed after the

image began to circulate online with comments about the

Tiananmen Square events. The torch in the upper left of

the chalkboard replicates the one held by the iconic God-

dess of Democracy at the Tiananmen demonstrations (the

other notations also are indirect references to the student

movement, see Earp 2010). The point is that, like the news

blackout of anti-Mubarak protests, the regime attempted to

strictly enforce silence about the events surrounding the

Tiananmen Square protests, but cracks in the system occur

for numerous reasons. It is not plausible that editors could

IJCV : Vol. 6 (1) 2012, pp. 55 – 74

Hank Johnston: State Violence and Oppositional Protest 66

have carelessly missed these references; rather they seemed

to be testing the limits of what could pass.

keeping the hope of political opposition alive among a

populace that is frequently outraged at the small injustices

encountered every day. Rather than preference falsification,

the analyst might speak of the “hope confirmation” that

these microlevel acts accomplish for segments of the popu-

lation.

Proposition 6. The effect of free-space acts of opposition is

two-fold: creating a base for the social organization of opposi-

tional movement, and breaking the social-psychological con-

straints of silence and preference falsification. This second

effect broadens awareness of others who share oppositional

sentiments, and creates a potential pool of actors poised to

participate once mobilization efforts begin.

6. The Heterogeneity of State Violence

Max Weber observed that the state maintains a monopoly

on the legitimate exercise of violence. Mao Tse-tung ad-

vised his cadres that all power flows from the barrel of a

gun. It should come as no surprise as we consider the ex-

ercise of state power that the state uses violence against its

citizenry much more frequently than the other way

around. The sheer firepower and destructive reach of the

modern state are overwhelming compared to what citizens

have at their disposal. Yet HCAs are also typified by a com-

plex division of labor in the business of violence among the

military, security forces, special units known for their

fierceness and/or loyalty, secret police, local police, vigi-

lantes and militias, and, finally, thugs and enforcers who do

the bidding of local elites and strongmen. Activists in Syria

report that there are no less than sixteen distinct branches

of security apparatus operating in major cities. Thus, the

complex division of labor in HCAs extends to agents of

state violence, and carries with it significant consequences

regarding state violence and free spaces. My goals in this

final section are to show (1) how these various levels are

analytically discrete in the application of violence; and (2)

how, even here, the recursive relationship between the state

and opposition exerts its influence in the course of events,

especially at microlevels, to create spaces for opposition.

6.1 The Military and Ethnic-Communal Heterogeneity

The highest, most institutionally established, and geo-

graphically most extensive level of analysis is the national

Figure 1: “Commemorating Children’s Day” at Tiananmen Square

Source: http://chinaview.wordpress.com/2010/06/03/

These examples provide good characterizations of the rela-

tionship between state and opposition at local levels of the

authoritarian state. We perhaps see it reported more fre-

quently in relation to press freedoms because Western re-

porters in China, Iran, Russia, and elsewhere, are especially

attuned to these. But the general conclusions are that small

openings and cracks occur (1) because of the heroism of

particular actors, such as reporter Shi Tao, who was sen-

tenced to a ten-year prison term for e-mailing to the West

the Ministry of Propaganda’s directives about Tiananmen

Square coverage. (2) Free spaces occur because of mistakes,

ineptitude, complexity, and the sheer extent of the task of

implementing total control. (3) They also are carved out

through the complicity of certain agents who, as minor acts

of rebellion against quiescence and pervasive control, let

prohibited material pass. (4) They occur because of the in-

herent creativity of activists who find ways to evade re-

strictions that the authorities never contemplated (for

example, the fascinating case of Chinese internet phenom-

enon of the “grass mud horse” which recently went viral

there (see Wines 2009). In all these cases, the effect is not so

much giant strides in political opposition, but rather

IJCV : Vol. 6 (1) 2012, pp. 55 – 74

Hank Johnston: State Violence and Oppositional Protest 67

military. Military elites are often highly integrated and in-

fluential in HCAs, as in China, Russia, Venezuela, Mexico,

Egypt, and Tunisia. Cleavages between political and mili-

tary elites pose basic threats to regime stability, but it is

typical that high-capacity states quell conflict through

strong economic incentives for both political and military

elites. When the interests of generals diverge from those of

political leaders, however, history tells us that regime

change often follows. Diverging interests at the elite level

was a major element in recent events in Egypt, where press-

ure from the generals drove Mubarak and his National

Democratic Party from power. The most plausible ex-

planation is that military leaders threw in their lot with the

protesters as a means to preserve their extensive involve-

ment in private sector enterprises and ensure continuity of

huge military budgets and massive foreign assistance, pri-

marily from the United States. Here, divergent interests

worked in favor of regime change and tentative steps to-

ward liberalization. In contrast, the willingness of Chinese

military leaders to unleash violent repression against stu-

dents’ democratic protests in Tiananmen Square in 1989

suggest there was strong correspondence between the inter-

ests of the military and political elites. Paradoxically, this

correspondence rested in part on similar reasons, heavy

military involvement in state and joint-venture enterprises,

with the difference being the smaller scope of popular pro-

test in China, which was confined to student mobilizations

in Beijing and several other Chinese universities.

Proposition 7. The size and scope of popular unrest, the inde-

pendence of the military, and the interaction between the two

in relation to threats to military interests are the key factors

determining the military’s response to popular unrest.

Complicating the relationship between military and politi-

cal elites are communal divisions within state territories,

which function as another major variable in levels of state

violence. Communal identities – not only ethnic but also

religious and tribal – divide many states, and, more often

than not, can unite the national military command against

separatist pressures that threaten territorial integrity of the

state. In ethnically diverse states it is common for the

dominance of the majority group to be maintained in the

upper ranks of the military. When it is not, the con-

sequences can be far-reaching. In the former Soviet Union,

for example, ethnic divisions in the military undermined

orders to fire on separatist protesters in various ethnic re-

publics. In the Estonian SSR, Air Force General Djokar Du-

daev, a Chechen, refused orders to fire on protesters calling

for independence at a critical juncture in the Soviet

Union’s dissolution. Dudaev was schooled in nationalist

separatism when he was assigned to the air force base in

Tartu, Estonia, and went on to lead the separatist Chechen

republic to independence in 1991, and into war with Russia

in 1994.

In contrast, nationalist protests and anti-Han ethnic riots

in the Tibetan and Xinjian Autonomous Regions, where

separatist movements have mobilized, have been violently

repressed by the Han-dominated military units. Ethnic ho-

mogeneity minimized the risk of division within the ranks.

Because the defense of national territory is so basic to the

military’s function, the state’s armed forces are frequently

players in the violent suppression of separatist ethnic-

national protests. In some cases, no doubt because com-

munal identifications are strong and activate

social-psychological responses of violence and retribution,

the most extreme form of state violence – ethnic genocide

– is typically perpetrated by ethnically unified army units.

This was clearly seen in the opening narrative about the

Russia-Chechen war and the extensive violence that Rus-

sian air force and army, motivated partially by ethnic

stereotypes, perpetrated on Chechen civilians.

Proposition 8. State military violence is aggravated when eth-

nic and communal divisions overlap with oppositional protest

mobilization. An ethnically homogeneous military command

has less hesitation using violence against minority ethnic

movements because attributions of difference mitigate em-

pathy and identification.

In Syria, sectarian rather than ethnic divisions operate in

military organization. The regime of Bashir al-Assad is

dominated by Alawite Muslims, a minority Shiite sect, and

Alawites tend to prevail among the leadership of the army

and security forces. Alawite-led units slaughtered ten thou-

sand people to put down protests in the Sunni city of

Hama in 1982. Today, threatened by mounting opposition

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Hank Johnston: State Violence and Oppositional Protest 68

led by the majority Sunnis and the social-psychological ef-

fects of communal identity, the Syrian army had at the

time of writing killed over nine thousand protesters. More-

over, sectarian divisions in the lower ranks have under-

mined the effectiveness of military violence – more on this

below.

6.2 Militias and Praetorian Guards

Militias mobilized at the regime’s behest are to be distin-

guished from the national army, navy, and air force. While

militias may be heavily armed, a common pattern is that

they are under the command of the ruling party or a small

inner circle of political elites associated with the head of

state. Special military units that are segregated from the

national armed forces can also be grouped here too. I have

in mind Presidential Guards, Republican Guards, and simi-

lar praetorian units that are directly answerable to the

leader as insurance against military coups d’etat, as in the

case of Moammar Kadafi’s Revolutionary Brigade. During

the turmoil that swept through Libya in 2011, this sizeable

force had units assigned to protect Kadafi against units that

might prove less loyal. In Syria, Bashar al-Assad’s brother

Maher, heads the Revolutionary Guard and the notorious

Fourth Division, both based in Damascus. In general, elite

forces are distinguished from regular troops by special pay,

benefits, and equipment to ensure their loyalty.

Regarding the Libyan uprising, Kadafi’s regime had lower

capacity compared to Egypt or China, and tended toward

the sultanistic pole of repressive regimes. Importantly, this

was reflected in the fragmentation of the central military

command and widespread defections among military com-

manders when protests broke out and repression began.

Apart from the regular Libyan army, which had about

forty-five thousand troops prior to the rebellion, the Revol-

utionary Guards had about four thousand and the People’s

Militia reserves about four thousand. Characteristically for

sultanism, Kadafi’s policy was to make sure that com-

manders were continually rotated to prevent bonds of

loyalty from building between officers and men. He also

kept some units loyal to him by appointing sons or family

members to command them, and supplying them better

than other units, both in the quantity and quality of ar-

maments. The Khamis Brigade, commanded by one of

Kadafi’s sons, is reported to have received newer equip-

ment, such as the latest tanks and rocket launchers, while

other units made do with aging and low-tech Soviet

armaments (Zucchino 2011). These policies led to the

rapid split in the country when the uprising began, as nor-

mal units, many of which were based in the east, defected

to the opposition and better-armed, praetorian units con-

centrated in Tripoli to protect the regime.

Proposition 9. Reliance by political elites on special military

units is characteristic of lower capacity authoritarian regimes

tending toward the sultanistic model. This heterogeneity in the

control of violent resources disposes such regimes to civil war

rather than political transitions sustained by mass protests.

The division between the military and these special units

and militias or elite security units also gives rise to spaces

of opportunity for the opposition, and, as such is funda-

mental to the application of state violence. This was evi-

dent in Egypt when the army refused to fire on protesters,

but security forces and hired thugs waded into protests on

Friday, January 29, 2011. During the following two days, it

was the army that stood between protesters and armed

supporters of the regime. These events are examples of how

elites commonly rely on special units to ensure repressive

capacity. In Iran, the Basij Militia and Revolutionary

Guards, not the military, played a key role in the sup-

pression of the democratic movement in 2009 and recently

in February 2011, (Worth and Fahti 2009). Various observ-

ers have reported to me that the regime of Mahmoud

Ahmadinejad chooses not to rely on the military for politi-

cal enforcement because their loyalty in repressing Iranian

citizens cannot be counted on.

One possible reason for this derives from the same com-

munal identifications that I mentioned earlier as factors in

military violence against ethnic minorities. It is plausible

that Egyptian and Tunisian military officers were hesitant

to fire on protesting citizens in January and February 2011

because of an affinity they felt for them. This is not necess-

arily a reflection of support for protesters’ grievances, but

rather of shared identity as sons and daughters of the

nation (if there are no communal divisions). This recogni-

tion means that officers think twice before ordering con-

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Hank Johnston: State Violence and Oppositional Protest 69

scripts to fire on protesting youth with whom they can

identify strongly, and risking a breakdown in the chain of

command.

This is exactly what occurred in northern Syria town of Jisr

al-Shoughour in 2011. Lower-level desertions had been

reported for weeks as the regime mobilized national army

units against protesters, but a large military operation

against this Sunni stronghold meant that many Sunni con-

scripts were ordered to fire on townspeople. Scores refused,

and some officers defected to aid the townspeople’s

resistance (Zoeph and Shadid 2011). While authoritarian

states will vary in the degree of control and professional -

ization of the armed forces, in high-capacity regimes firing

on citizens is not what conscripts are trained for, nor do

middle-level officers see maneuvers against civilians as

their professional calling. Observers from within Syria have

documented that the Free Syrian Army, which by early

2012 was challenging Assad’s forces in several towns, draws

its recruits mostly from conscripts and low-level officers

who refuse such orders (Bilefsky 2012).

As defections mount and the tide of protest rises, the mil-

itias and special army units mentioned earlier are mobiliz-

ed. Their availability reflects how autocrats often recognize

the gaps in repressive capability that derive from the con-

sequences of low pay and community integration of police,

or, perhaps, ethnic and/or regional divisions in the military

and police. In the Syrian defections, low pay, lack of morale,

poor conditions, and shortages of food among conscripts,

plus the Alawite-Sunni sectarian divide between officers

and their men, were factors in the breakdown of discipline.

Another repressive strategy in these circumstances is the

use of mercenaries as a way to buy assurance of repressive

capability. The rationale is that because foreigners have no

ties to the community, and because they are often eth-

nically, racially, and linguistically different from the citizen-

ry, they are more reliable perpetrators of violence – and

perhaps more brutal. In the Bahraini protests of February

2011, where the initial response of King Hamad ibn Isa

Khalifa was to order the police to invade the occupation of

the Pearl Roundabout and fire on protesters, he was able to

count on the obedience of his security forces partly because

many were foreigners from neighboring countries and

from Southeast Asia (Parker and Murphy 2011). Later, he

invited in Saudi Arabian troops to quell protests. As popu-

lar uprisings spread through the Arab world, Kaddafi in

Libya was reported to have brought in as many as four

thousand mercenary fighters from Niger, Mali, and Sudan’s

Darfur region (Daragahi and Therolf 2011; Gentleman

2011). Earlier he had also recruited Touareg from Mali and

Niger into the Libyan Army. Their presence, plus that of the

other the sub-Saharan mercenaries, buttressed Kaddafi’s

control of Tripoli as other parts of the country joined the

rebellion and units of the regular military defected (Mac-

Farquhar 2011). Mercenaries joined special militia units

wearing red berets – as opposed to regular green army be-

rets – to assault rebellious districts in Tripoli. For the ana-

lyst sorting out the array of repressive forces deployed

during times of protest intensification, foreign mercenaries

enter the mix of special militias, elite units, praetorian

guards, and loyal security forces known for their brutality.

Proposition 10. Also characteristic of lower capacity auth-

oritarian regimes tending toward the sultanistic model, is the

use of foreign mercenaries, whose presence raises questions of

control and risks escalating violence against civilians

Yet for mid-level party loyalists and local cadres threatened

by protesting citizens, these kinds of repressive resources

are typically not under their control. At these levels, it is

more typical for local police and thugs to be called to do

their bidding, which brings us to the next level of how viol-

ence is organized.

6.3 Thuggery and Vigilantes

Thuggery and vigilantes in their most radical and virulent

forms tend to be organized informally and temporarily

outside official sanction. Here I have in mind goons, en-

forcers, and knee-cappers who are often given free reign to

beat protesters, intimidate oppositional activists, and/or in-

still fear among the populace. While being a thug or a bully

is an individual behavior, it is common that HCAs employ

such people (who will, of course, vary in their predis-

positions to violence, lawlessness, and self interest) in times

of growing oppositional mobilization and/or times of cri-

sis, as in the case of Libya, when Kaddafi armed his sup-

IJCV : Vol. 6 (1) 2012, pp. 55 – 74

Hank Johnston: State Violence and Oppositional Protest 70

porters in Tripoli to intimidate citizens from protesting

(Therolf 2011). While such violent episodes are not easily

amenable to systematic research, it is plausible that the

prospect of guns and official cartes blanche to use them at-

tracts party members and friends who are prone to em-

brace opportunities for plunder, violence, and rape, rather

than answering a “higher calling” to restore public safety.

Thuggery is also commonly employed by local agents of the

state, not to quell protests or ensure state security in the

broad sense, but to protect their own venal interests. In one

example of extreme local-level thuggery in China, a

53-year-old man named Qian Yunhui, who had relentlessly

campaigned for six years against illegal land seizures in his

village, was reported to have been murdered by local men.

According to his wife, he received a phone call asking him to

go outside his house one morning, and simply disappeared.

An hour later, his body was found crushed beneath the tire

of a truck, victim of an apparent accident, but villagers ear-

lier had witnessed several men holding him down in the

road (Yang and Wong 2010). We know about this because

pictures of his gory death were widely posted on the Chi-

nese internet. Public interest was great because because land

disputes are common occurrences in rural China (Yang and

Wong 2010). Similar seizures of land by local officials and

the death of an outspoken citizen spurred an unprece-

dented rebellion of the inhabitants of Wukan village, in

Guangdong Province in December 2011. Provincial party

officials promised elections and investigation of corrupt real

estate deals to diffuse the rebellion (Jacobs 2012).

In another example, two Chinese journalists were severely

beaten by Badong County police in May 2009 as they at-

tempted to report on a case involving the rape of a young

waitress by three party officials there. This case too drew

significant public attention on the internet because it was a

compelling narrative of official venality and passion – the

waitress stabbed one of the officials in retaliation. The local

party cadres compounded their offense by ordering the

beatings in an attempt to block media reports of the inci-

dent. The reporters, Ms. Kong Pu from The Beijing News

and Mr. Wei Yi from Nanfang People’s Weekly, were ar-

rested. Wei was forced to write a statement admitting that

he “had conducted an interview without the local auth-

orities’ approval.” The audio and photo files Wei made

during the interview were also destroyed (Ya 2009).

Proposition 11. In contrast to violence by the military or mil-

itias, thuggery is a low-level form of state violence common in

HCAs. Its official intent is to maintain quiescence through

fear, but often its practical effect is to reinforce free-space-

based opposition and illegitimacy.

6.4 Police and Corruption

Similar tales of police brutality were reported as the veil of

fear was lifted in Egypt and Tunisia in early 2011. In Russia, a

recent poll found that one quarter of respondents had per-

sonal knowledge of incidents where the police beat or tor-

tured people. A Russian member of parliament reports:

“Our law-enforcement organs are seriously littered with

scum and losers of all kinds” (Loiko 2011, A4). The reason is

that in repressive regimes the police serve those in power as

much as (and perhaps more than) they do some abstract

sense of the regime’s social order. Because the police are

often enforcers of elite scams and shakedowns at national,

regional, and local levels, the same bureaucrats and party of-

ficials are willing to turn their back on police abuses involved

in similar corrupt activities – or even encourage them. Com-

pounding the this synergy, lower-echelon police in auth-

oritarian states are usually paid poorly, making bribes,

shakedown, and illegal enterprises common sources of in-

come, and when this occurs, the dirty money frequently

flows upward to elites higher up in the feeding chain. When a

lieutenant general in the Russian Police was recently arrested

for corruption, the investigation revealed that he had lived in

a mansion filled with jewelry, guns, antiques, and fine art. He

also owned five different Moscow apartments and property

in Cyprus and London (Loiko 2011, A4). This lifestyle was

paid for by his cut of deals and scams conducted by those

under his authority. Moreover, it is common that many re-

gime elites know of these practices and turn a blind eye.

Although most of these observations will not surprise ana-

lysts of authoritarian states, I suggest that the use of police

for political repression and state security – a fundamental

principle of HCAs – has a ripple effect in local corruption

and brutality that is perhaps less widely recognized. The re-

lationship can be summarized as follows:

IJCV : Vol. 6 (1) 2012, pp. 55 – 74

Hank Johnston: State Violence and Oppositional Protest 71

Proposition 12. Because police are the local enforcers for cor-

rupt administrators and party functionaries, the carte

blanche they receive for low-level violence spawns lawlessness

that permeates society and feeds free-space-based illegitimacy.

As one measure of this relationship, last February’s texting

and twitter calls for mobilization in China (the preempted

Jasmine revolution) were for an end to authoritarian rule,

inflation, and widespread corruption (Jacobs and Ansfield

2011). Another measure is that two foci of early Syrian

protests against the al-Assad regime were the corrupt and

unaccountable security forces (especially regarding deaths

of detained youths) and the corrupt inner circle of Assad’s

friends. Bashir Assad’s first cousin, Rami Maklouf, is one of

the country’s wealthiest businessmen (Shadid 2011). Mak-

louf is known in Syria as Mr. Five Percent, reflecting his

standard cut in deals from state contracts. His most public

business, Syriatel, had its offices attacked during protests in

May 2011, in an indication of public awareness of these

inner machinations of the ruling elite. It is likely that this

relationship between corruption and security forces was

the force behind the widely reported frustration and anger

that drove the recent revolutions in Egypt, Tunisia,

Bahrain, and Yemen. The empassioned narrative of the in-

communicado detention of Wael Ghonim thrust him into

the spotlight during the Egyptian protests precisely because

so many citizens were able to identify with it. Moreover, it

is likely that state elites know how their subjects resent the

pervasiveness of official corruption. In Syria, as an early

measure to insure quiescence in Aleppo, the country’s sec-

ond largest city, the Assad regime specifically reined in cor-

rupt activities, bribe-taking, and shakedowns there.

According to one report, “For some people, these are really

wonderful times” (Abdulrahim 2011, 4).

At lower levels, the majority of the police and security

forces are made up of common workers, who, in the weak

and uneven economies of these authoritarian regimes, are

happy to have a regular job. For many, it is their in-

stitutional role that leads them to brutish behavior, but

when their shifts are over, they go home to family, friends,

and neighbors, many of whom understand that the bribes

are systemic income supplements, a regular part of doing

business, and a way to feed the family, however distasteful.

For the unemployed men in the neighborhood, it is plaus-

ible that most would not turn down an opportunity to put

on the uniform to earn a living the same way. In Mexico

under PRI authoritarianism, la mordida was resented be-

cause of its arbitrariness and its economic “bite” on

families, but also normative and widely expected. This

“normalization” complicates moments of political mobi-

lization at the microlevel of analysis, because the police and

security forces are torn between their own self interest and

orders from superiors, on the one hand, and social pressure

from friends and family not to follow orders to repress pro-

tests on the other. A critical moment in the Tunisian mobi-

lizations was when the police and security officers refused

to attack fellow citizens, and in turn were embraced by pro-

testers. In general, such defections mark crucial junctures

in opposition movements. As division appears within the

ranks of the police and security forces, on-the-ground tac-

tical assessments of advantage often appear to favor the

protesters by virtue of their sheer numbers. When this oc-

curs, regime change is not far behind.

7. Conclusions

Authoritarian states are not monoliths of social control and

administration. Understanding their complexity is funda-

mental to understanding how the mobilization-repression

nexus unfolds in them, and especially the forms and fre-

quency of state violence. It is axiomatic that HCAs do not

liberalize on their own. Even China, which since the 2008

Olympics (and prior to 2011) had been responsive to

citizen mobilization in some spheres – anticorruption cam-

paigns, for example – tightened social control in other

spheres to deftly manage citizen discontent. In both expan-

sion and contraction of responsiveness, it is popular press-

ure that often forces elite action. This is the reciprocal

relationship between regime and opposition in HCAs. The

focus of this article has been to trace out the contours of

how it occurs at various levels of state organization, with

insights from a comparative focus on mid- and lower levels.

The organization of the forces of violence, which varies by

states according to the threats that the opposition poses to

political elites, is especially important. I have traced several

tactics that political elites may employ, on the one hand, to

weaken threats from the military, especially division of

IJCV : Vol. 6 (1) 2012, pp. 55 – 74

Hank Johnston: State Violence and Oppositional Protest 72

labor and resource allocation, and, on the other, to ensure

repressive capacity when necessary. The organization of the

military and militias ranges from centralization in the capi-

tal to barracks in distant peripheries of the state, which are

often less reliable because of ethnic and/or communal divi-

sions.

Parallel to the forces of violence are the forces of political

control, surveillance, and fear management. These too are

organized hierarchically and spatially, which, as for armies

and militias, offers spaces for divisions and cracks in social

control. At the local level there is often an overlap between

party officials and the means of violence, as they employ

thugs and vigilantes to enforce their interests. This is viol-

ence of the state at the micolevel, and is where the majority

of citizens encounter an unjust and arbitrary state. But I

also argue that the reciprocal dance between regime and

opposition also is performed at this level too, and that cre-

ativity, bravery, and even crosscutting ties of family and

friendship can undermine more formally organized police

functions, which may necessitate the use of thugs and en-

forcers. These relationships raise the question of whether

there are inherent contradictions in high-capacity auth-

oritarian states. Although they may appear quite stable in

the short and medium term, it is an interesting proposition

that these underlying forces may foster the gathering of op-

positional sentiments and actions in the long term, and

contribute to a spiral of violence, retribution, opposition,

mobilization, and elite division. I close, then, with a pro-

vocative proposition that necessarily leaves many questions

unanswered, but consistent with the intent of this article,

namely to guide research on state violence, repression, and

opposition in new directions, is derived from its mid- and

lower-level focus on repression and opposition.

Proposition 13. The complexity of HCAs gives rise to basic

contradictions that emanate from (1) the lack of ac-

countability of political elites at various levels and the en-

suing corruption that permeates society, and (2) how hiatuses

in the social control administration create free spaces where

illegitimacy and opposition thrive because of point number

one. These two patterns suggest the inherent instability of

HCAs in the long run.

The research task, then, is to specify why some HCAs per-

sist as long as they do, say seventy years in the Soviet

Union, or fifty in apartheid South Africa, or fifteen years in

Pinochet’s Chile. To answer such questions, a dialogue be-

tween the broad system-level comparisons characteristic of

so much repression-mobilization research and the mid-

and lower-level variables specified in this report, will likely

be necessary.

IJCV : Vol. 6 (1) 2012, pp. 55 – 74

Hank Johnston: State Violence and Oppositional Protest 73

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Hank Johnston

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Jul 2024

Why do people opt for different forms of collective action, like lobbying, marching, or rioting, to voice contentious claims? The patterns of these collective action forms, or “tactics” exhibit variations among groups, regions, and nations, evolving over time. Current explanations for such tactical patterns are unsatisfactory due to limited theoretical and empirical exploration of the concept of repertoires of contention. This paper presents a comprehensive theoretical model drawing on social practice and learning theories, centered around the notion of tactical familiarity. The central idea posits that people in diverse societies have learned distinct ways of doing politics, gaining varying familiarity and proficiency with different tactics, developed through three mechanisms: feedback, diffusion, and memory. These mechanisms contribute to the formation of notably distinct repertoires of contention. Based on this theoretical model, this study develops an empirical measure of tactical familiarity. The novel measure allows comparing the impact of tactical familiarity with other factors, like political regime characteristics. Previous research has not conducted such comparisons, as it often focuses on particular tactics, like protests or violence, without delving into the full array of potential tactical choices, including conventional-institutional ones. Using quantitative event analysis and a dataset of 10 Million International Dyadic Events, the paper examines 17,575 global political events from 2000 to 2004. Multilevel multinomial logistic regression highlights repertoires of contention’s significant influence on tactical choices, potentially outweighing political regime characteristics.

The Contradictory Impact of Transnational AIDS Institutions on State Repression in China, 1989–2013

Article

Full-text available

Nov 2018
AM J SOCIOL

Yan Long

Existing research has focused on the extent to which transnational interventions compel recalcitrant governments to reduce levels of domestic repression, but few have considered how such interventions might also provoke new forms of repression. Using a longitudinal study of repression against AIDS activism in China between 1989 and 2013, the author proposes that transnational institutions' provision of material resources and reshaping of organizational rules can transform a domestic repressive apparatus in specific policy areas. The intervention of transnational AIDS institutions not only constrained traditional violent coercion but also generated new forms of "diplomatic repression" through (1) changing repressive motives by moving AIDS from the margin to the center of mainstream politics and (2) supplying resources, networks, and models of action that enabled government organizations to reformulate health social organizations as new repressive actors with innovative repertoires of strategies inside and outside China's territory.

States vs. Social Movements: Protests and State Repression in Asia

Article

Full-text available

Sep 2022

This study considers how governments use state-sponsored propaganda and state violence in tandem to repress social movements and, in so doing, exacerbate polarization. We specifically focus on cases in young and non-democracies in East and Southeast Asia: China and Hong Kong, the Free Papua Movement in Indonesia, and Myanmar’s more recent coup. Using a time series analysis, our analysis reveals a temporal relationship between state propaganda and violence; however, we do not find much evidence that these state actions Granger-cause social movement activities. The exception to this is in Myanmar, where we find that repressive state actions decrease activity in Facebook groups criticizing the Tatmadaw, which in turn increases offline protest activities.

Local power play: the post-election repression and local governance

Article

Apr 2025
Democratization

‘The Climate Is Changing and the President Is Not’: ‘Non-Political’ Climate Activism in Russia

Article

Jun 2024

An empirical study of “public security centralism” in modern China and its legal and political ramifications

Article

Mar 2024
INT J LAW CRIME JUST

Dynamics between national security laws and repertoires of political action: A comparative analysis of Hong Kong and South Korea

Article

Jan 2024

Seohee Kwak

This article undertakes a comparative analysis of two cases, Hong Kong and South Korea, each characterized by distinct levels of political and civil liberties to elucidate how the institutionalization of national security operates in shaping the repertoires of popular political actions and the repressive conduct of state actors. In both cases, the legal frameworks serve to curtail popular political action, both online and offline, often through discretionary applications of national security norms, resulting in ambiguity. They bestow legitimacy upon state agencies to engage in protest policing, surveillance, and the suppression of individuals or organizations in the name of upholding national security. In contrast, the national security laws in Hong Kong and South Korea, influenced by varying interpretations and applications of perceived threats to national security, result in differences in the extent and degree of contentious political actions and state repression.

Reneging and the subversion of protest-driven policy change in autocracies

Article

Sep 2023

Sasha de Vogel

Introduction: Opportunities, mobilizing structures, and framing processes – toward a synthetic, comparative perspective on social movements

Chapter

Jan 1996

Russia Confronts Chechnya: Roots of a Separatist Conflict

Book

Sep 1998

John B. Dunlop

In this book John Dunlop provides an understanding of the background to the Russian invasion of Chechnya in December 1994, tracing events from 4,000 BC to the time of the invasion. The historic encounter between Chechens and Russians, first during pre-Petrine, and then with imperial Russia, is carefully examined. The genocide and oppression endured by the Chechens under the communists is discussed in detail. The convulsive 'Chechen Revolution' of 1991, which brought General Dzhokhar Dudaev to power, is described, as are internal developments within Chechnya during 1992–4. The author traces the negotiation process between the Russian Federation and secessionist Chechnya, elucidating the reasons for the breakdown of the quest for a peaceful resolution of the conflict.

After the Massacre: Mobilization in the Wake of Harsh Repression

Article

Jun 2004

Ronald Francisco

What do dissidents do after a massacre? This article uses thirty-one brutal repressions to test collective-action theory in the harshest possible context. After a massacre, dissidents are outraged at the state, but also fearful of further repression. Can dissidents mobilize backlash protests in these circumstances? The report shows that there usually is sufficient communication of the massacre to enable subsequent backlash mobilization. Also, there is sufficient continuity in leadership after the massacre to coordinate backlash protest. The massacre-event leadership either remains in tact or is immediately and effectively replaced after the event. Moreover, dissident leaders use adaptive tactics to elude subsequent repression in most cases. A Bayesian updating test for mobilization shows that repression reduces backlash protests and that no repression increases backlash. This report concludes by affirming that collective-action theory works even in this highly challenging situation.

The J-Curve of Rising and Declining Satisfactions as a Cause of Some Great Revolutions and a Contained Rebellion

Chapter

Sep 2017

Davies James C.

Civil Rights Movement

Chapter

Dec 2015

Aldon Morris

Fifty years ago African Americans were severely oppressed. Not only were they unable to enjoy many of the basic citizenship rights guaranteed by the US Constitution but also, under Jim Crow, blacks were denied the franchise, barred from interacting with whites in public spaces, and trapped at the bottom of the economic ladder, where they were relegated to the poorest paying and least desirable jobs. The modern civil rights movement, a major social force in the mid-1950s, was the vehicle through which African Americans and their supporters overthrew Jim Crow. Partly as a response to this groundbreaking movement, scholars have constructed a new concept of social movements where organization, strategic thinking, cultural traditions, and political encounters figure largely as explanatory factors in analyses of social movements.

Chechnya: Life in a War-Torn Society

Article

Oct 2005

Dynamics of Repression and Mobilization: The German Extreme Right in The 1990s

Article

Sep 1997

Ruud Koopmans

In spite of the centrality of the relationship between repression and mobilization to our understanding of state-movement interactions, the literature has not even come close to providing conclusive answers. A variety of competing models exists, each of which can claim some theoretical plausibility and empirical support. This inconclusiveness seems to derive from the general level of analysis in many studies and from insufficient empirical acknowledgment of the interactive and dynamic nature of the repression-mobilization nexus. This paper aims to avoid these problems by presenting a detailed analysis of the interaction between the mobilization of the German extreme right and the different forms of repression that state authorities have reactively applied. Two types of repression—institutional and situational—and their impacts on two types of mobilization—violent and nonviolent—are distinguished and analyzed both cross-sectionally, by comparing the sixteen German federal states, and diachronically, through a time-series analysis for the period 1990-1994. The results consistently show that the two types of repression have very different impacts on mobilization. Whereas situational police repression as a direct reaction to mobilization events had an escalating effect, more indirect, institutional repress-sion such as bans of organizations and demonstrations or trials and court rulings against activists had a clear negative impact on the extreme right's level of mobilization. The article discusses several reasons for this relative effectiveness of institutional repression, including its greater degree of consistency and legitimacy as well as its preventive focus on mobilizing structures.

"Let's Get Small": The Dynamics of (Small) Contention in Repressive States

Article

Jun 2006

Hank Johnston

This report builds upon the dynamics of contention approach to political mobilization by tracing the development of a type of contentious episode common to repressive states, here identified as resistant contention. This form of claim making targets the state but is distinct from the fully public and trangressive challenges against the state that are the focus of the dynamics of contention approach. This report traces how episodes of resistant contention track through two key processes - actor constitution and scale shift - as well as many mechanisms that combine in more public contention. Examples from Eastern Europe, Latin America, the Soviet Caucasus, and Spain are reviewed to trace, first, patterns of contentious speech; namely, "small" claim making and grievance articulation under conditions of risk. I argue that contentious political talk is fundamental to the process of actor constitution in repressive states. Then I trace how contentious speech is patterned in the form of intellectual circles, cultural groups, dissident groups, and official groups and organizations, many of which function publicly but also privately and contentiously. These boundary-spanning groups are the loci of innovation and identity formation in resistant episodes. Scale shift dynamically occurs with the process of actor constitution, typically taking the form of hit-and-run protests, graffiti, clandestine placements, and event seizures. The final stage in resistant contention is the emergence of symbolic mobilizations, which are clearly public and transgressive.

Domination and the Arts of Resistance

Chapter

Nov 2007

James C. Scott

Russia's Chechen War

Article

Dec 2003

Tracey C. German

Widespread media interest into the Chechen conflict reflects an ongoing concern about the evolution of federal Russia. Why did the Russian leadership initiate military action against Chechnya in December 1994 but against no other constituent part of the Federation? This study demonstrates that the Russian invasion represented the culmination of a crisis that was perceived to have become an increasing threat not only to the stability of the North Caucasus region, but also to the very foundations of Russian security. It looks closely at the Russian Federation in transition, following the collapse of the communist Soviet Union, and the implications of the 1991 Chechen Declaration of Independence in the context of Russia's democratisation project.

State Violence and Oppositional Protest in High-Capacity Authoritarian Regimes

Abstract and Figures

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