Three Essays on Non-State Actors and Repression in Dictatorships Open Access
Edwards, Pearce (Summer 2021)
Published
Abstract
How do authoritarian regimes address challenges to their rule which emerge from the civilian population, and how do civilians resist or contribute to regimes' efforts to address these challenges, particularly repression? In literature on repression and resistance in dictatorships, civilians typically enter as victims of state violence or participants in mass protest events which seek to challenge the regime. The papers in this dissertation each complicate this perspective on civilians' role in authoritarian repression. The first paper focuses on leaders of religious institutions who are embedded among and carry influence with civilians, arguing that when these leaders oppose repression, they are able to reduce its frequency in areas under their authority. Evidence from Catholic bishops in Argentina during its 1976-1983 military dictatorship supports the argument. The second paper examines how civilians may facilitate authoritarian repression, motivated by partisan rivalries to seek harm on their political opponents in areas of close electoral competition. Examination of repression in the period following Chile's 1973 military coup establishes a link between areas with close competition under democratic elections and repression in the early months following the coup. The third paper analyzes the effects of repression and of dissidents who seek to use revolutionary violence against dictatorships on the decision of dissidents to participate in nonviolent protests. Using a game-theoretic model, the paper demonstrates that these two shadows of violence may either increase dissidents' willingness to protest or decrease it. The strategic anticipation of future violence accounts for how violence can increase protest. Each of the three papers offers a novel contribution to literature on repression and resistance. The first and third paper study a particular type of civilian|religious leaders and violent revolutionaries, respectively, which receive comparatively little attention in research on repression and resistance in dictatorships. The second paper suggests a particular kind of civilian behavior, rivalry-driven support for authoritarian repression, which receives less focus than opposition to state violence.
Table of Contents
1 Introduction 1
1.1 Non-State Actors and Repression in Dictatorships . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.2 Overview of the Dissertation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.2.1 Paper 1: Religious Institutions and Resistance to Repression . 4
1.2.2 Paper 2: Political Competition and Authoritarian Repression . 6
1.2.3 Paper 3: Protest in the Shadow of Repression and Extremist Violence . 8
2 Religious Institutions and Resistance to Repression: The Bishops Opposed to Argentina's Dirty War 12
2.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
2.2 Religious Leaders and State Violence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
2.3 The Argentine Dirty War and the Catholic Church . . . . . . . . . . 19
2.4 Research Design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
2.4.1 Measuring Bishop Opposition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
2.4.2 Measuring Repression . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
2.4.3 Other Covariates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
2.4.4 How Are Bishops Appointed? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
2.4.5 Statistical Estimation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
2.5 Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
2.5.1 Opposed Bishops and Repression . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
2.5.2 Robustness Tests . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
2.5.3 An Instrumental Variables Strategy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
2.5.4 Alternative Explanation: Supporting Bishops . . . . . . . . . 35
2.6 Testing Mechanisms of Bishop Influence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
2.6.1 Local Assistance: Movement of Priests for the Third World . . 36
2.6.2 Confirming Local Assistance: Micro-Level Evidence . . . . . . 37
2.6.3 Public Appeals: Catholic Adherents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
2.7 Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
3 Political Competition and Authoritarian Repression: Evidence from Pinochet's Chile 45
3.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
3.2 Popular Threats, Repression, and Political Competition . 51
3.3 Research Design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
3.3.1 The Military Coup and Civilian Collaboration in Chile, 1973 . 56
3.3.2 Addressing Two Threats to Inference . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
3.3.3 Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
3.3.4 Variables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
3.3.5 Estimation Strategy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
3.4 Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
3.4.1 Main Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
3.4.2 Robustness Tests . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
3.5 Testing the Partisan Rivalry Mechanism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
3.6 Alternative Explanations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
3.6.1 Regime Strategy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
3.6.2 Different Victim Behaviors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
3.7 Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
4 Protest in the Shadow of Repression and Extremist Violence: Backlash, Incitement, and the Anticipation of Conflict 80
4.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
4.2 Protest and the Anticipation of Violence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
4.2.1 Civil Rights in Mississippi, 1963-1964 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
4.2.2 The Political Left in Weimar Germany, 1920-1924 . . . . . . . 86
4.3 The Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
4.3.1 Players and Actions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
4.3.2 Information and Strategies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
4.3.3 Payoffs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
4.3.4 Equilibrium . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
4.4 Comparative Statics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
4.4.1 Repression . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
4.4.2 Violent Capabilities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
4.5 Applying the Mechanism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
4.6 Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
Appendix A Religious Institutions and Resistance to Repression 114
A.1 A: Descriptive Statistics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114
A.2 B: Bishop Appointments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
A.3 C: Robustness Tests . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120
A.4 D: Instrumental Variables Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126
A.5 E: Alternative Explanation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128
A.6 F: Mechanism Tests . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130
A.6.1 Local Assistance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130
A.6.2 Confirming Local Assistance: Religious Orders . . . . . . . . . 131
A.6.3 Public Appeals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132
A.6.4 Backlash Mobilization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132
A.6.5 Private Appeals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
A.7 G: Archival Evidence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135
A.8 H: Scope Conditions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136
Appendix B Political Competition and Authoritarian Repression 137
B.1 A: Description of Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
B.2 B: Robustness Tests . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138
B.3 C: Mechanism Tests . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146
B.4 D: Alternative Explanation: Regime Strategy . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148
B.5 E: Alternative Explanation: Different Victim Behavior . . . . . . . . 151
Appendix C Protest in the Shadow of Repression and Extremist Violence 153
C.1 Proof of Proposition 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153
C.2 Payoffs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155
C.3 Proof of Proposition 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157
C.4 Proof of Proposition 3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160
C.5 Proof of Proposition 4 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161
C.6 Proof of Proposition 5 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
C.7 Note on Comparative Static Simulations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165
Bibliography 166
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