Affiliate & Associate

Research

Pushing Back: The Heterogeneous Effects of State-led Repression

In this paper I disentangle the extent to which state-led repression has heterogeneous effects that depend on individual characteristics. While in Chapter 1 I find that the average effect of repression on many individual political outcomes is negative, in this Chapter, I find robust evidence that repression has differential effects depending on people’s identities and how they react to challenges to it. For example, subjects who were members of a radical party in 1973, such as the communist party, and were repressed are more likely to join political parties, to work in and donate money to a political activities relative to those radicals who were not repressed. I also find that subjects who were students in 1973 and are repressed are more likely to belong to a union, participate in strikes and political protests and donate money for political activities than those who were not students and were not repressed. From these results it is possible to argue that while repression causes a generalized fear which can lead to de-politicization of all the individuals who were repressed, there are some exceptions where fear is counter-acted by people with particular individual characteristics, taking positive actions to re-affirm their identity which was challenged by repression.

Working Paper

Download Full Story (PDF)