To Repress or Not to Repress—Regime Survival Strategies in the Arab Spring

Abstract

Authoritarian regimes use repression as an essential strategy to attain regime stability and survival. During the Arab Spring, different forms of repression have been employed. We argue that to explain this variation, three bundles of characteristics have to be taken into account: the setup of the regime, the state, and the challenge. As we assume that elites have a wider repertoire of strategies besides repression at their disposal, the analysis of repression has to be embedded in a broader framework of strategies of rule. Including specific forms and target groups of repression, we develop an explanatory model addressing the question of which repressive measures rulers utilize under which circumstances. The postulated relationship between repression and characteristics of the state, regime, and challenge are then tested in a comparative analysis of the reactions to the challenges arising with the 2011 uprisings in two very different Arab countries, Bahrain and Egypt. On the basis of these empirical findings, we propose a readjusted model explaining repression.

Keywords:

• Arab world
• authoritarian rule
• military
• protests
• repression

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank two anonymous reviewers from Terrorism and Political Violence for very helpful remarks. A previous version of this article was presented at the Annual Conference of the German Political Science Association (DVPW)—Section for Comparative Politics, Marburg, March 29–31, 2012, where we benefited from an inspiring discussion, for which we are especially indebted to Timm Beichelt, Alexander Schmotz, and Andreas Schedler. We are also grateful to Oliver Schlumberger, Torsten Matzke, Jörg Haas, and André Bank for constructive and thoughtful comments.

Notes

We agree with Davenport and Inman, who underline the importance of considering a broader spectrum of relevant research, including qualitative and quantitative approaches as well as neighboring strands of literature; Christian Davenport and Molly Inman, “The State of State Repression Research Since the 1990s,” Terrorism and Political Violence 24, no. 4 (2012): 619–634.

See, e.g., Holger Albrecht and Oliver Schlumberger, “Waiting for Godot: Regime Change Without Democratization in the Middle East,” International Political Science Review 25, no. 4 (2004): 371–392; Oliver Schlumberger, “Opening Old Bottles in Search of New Wine: Studying Nondemocratic Legitimacy in the Middle East,” Middle East Critique 19, no. 3 (2004): 233–250; Steven Heydemann, “Upgrading Authoritarianism,” The Saban Center for Middle East Policy, Analysis Paper 13 (Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, October 2007); Johannes Gerschewski, “The Three Pillars of Stability: Legitimation, Repression, and Co-optation in Autocratic Regimes,” Democratization 20, no. 1 (2013): 13–36.

It is not easy to give a sound definition of stability and to differentiate it properly from other concepts. While regime durability only captures for how long a regime has persisted and therefore is measured as a time dimension, regime stability can be framed as the probability of regime durability in the future, or “as the probability that a regime will not experience breakdown,” a proposition first made by Torsten Matzke, cf. Maria Josua, “Co-optation as a Strategy of Authoritarian Legitimation—Success and Failure in the Arab World” (paper presented at the 3rd General Conference of the ECPR, Reykjavik, August 2011, 4). For different approaches towards the concept of stability, see Keith M. Dowding and Richard Kimber, “The Meaning and Use of ‘Political Stability,’ ” European Journal of Political Research 11 (1983): 229–243.

In order to denote regime actors, i.e., the ruler and incumbent elites, who are in colloquial language often referred to as “the regime,” we use the term government in Van Inwegen's sense: “the government is the group who controls the state”; see Patrick Van Inwegen, Understanding Revolution (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2011), 7.

Ronald Wintrobe, “Dictatorship: Analytical Approaches,” in Susan C. Strokes and Carles Boix eds., The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Politics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 388.

Oliver Schlumberger, “Political Liberalization, Authoritarian Regime Stability, and Imitative Institution Building” (paper presented at the Fifth Mediterranean Social and Political Research Meeting, Florence and Montecatini Terme, March 2004).

For the Arab world, the most frequently noted sources of legitimacy are material allocation, tradition, religion, and previously ideology (Schlumberger, “Opening Old Bottles” (see note 2 above)).

Christian Davenport, “Introduction,” in Christian Davenport, ed., Paths to State Repression: Human Rights Violations and Contentious Politics (Boulder: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000), 1. In this and other studies, mostly large-N techniques are used, focusing on social movements or on state terror, examining both causes for and consequences of repression.

Vincent Boudreau, “Precarious Regimes and Matchup Problems in the Explanation of Repressive Policy,” in Christian Davenport, Hank Johnston, and Carol Mueller, eds., Repression and Mobilization (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005), 54.

Will H. Moore, “The Repression of Dissent: A Substitution Model of Government Coercion,” The Journal of Conflict Resolution 44, no. 1 (2000): 107–127.

Karen Rasler, “Concessions, Repression, and Political Protest in the Iranian Revolution,” American Sociological Review 61, no. 1 (1996): 132–152; James C. Franklin, “Contentious Challenges and Government Responses in Latin America,” Political Research Quarterly 62, no. 4 (2009): 700–714.

We adhere to the notion of bounded rationality to acknowledge the fact that in the dynamic situations in which repression often occurs, information is far from complete, especially on the micro level. Despite the high level of uncertainty, repression as a strategy is not irrational per se. Christian Davenport, “State Repression and the Tyrannical Peace,” Journal of Peace Research 44, no. 4 (2007): 485–504; Wintrobe, “Dictatorship” (see note 5 above).

Davenport, “State Repression” (see note 12 above), 488.

Abel Escribà-Folch, “Repression, Political Threats, and Survival Under Autocracy” (paper presented at the 3rd General Conference of the ECPR, Reykjavik, August 2011, 8). At the same time, the decision for repression is influenced by former interaction with political contesters. This path dependency leads to context-specific “repressive patterns” (Vincent Boudreau, Resisting Dictatorship: Repression and Protest in Southeast Asia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 3).

Davenport, “State Repression” (see note 12 above), 488. This is also problematic because of the uncertainty concerning the regime's support as described by Wintrobe as the Dictator's Dilemma: “The more [a ruler's] repressive apparatus stifles dissent and criticism, the less he knows how much support he really has,” Wintrobe, “Dictatorship” (see note 5 above), 366.

Davenport, “State Repression” (see note 12 above), 488.

Ibid.

Ibid., 486; Escribà-Folch, “Repression, Political Threats, and Survival Under Autocracy” (see note 14 above), 7.

Cf. Escribà-Folch, “Repression, Political Threats, and Survival Under Autocracy” (see note 14 above), 7; Mark Irving Lichbach, “Deterrence or Escalation? The Puzzle of Aggregate Studies of Repression and Dissent,” The Journal of Conflict Resolution 31, no. 2 (1987): 266–297.

Davenport, “State Repression” (see note 12 above), 487.

Ibid. A similar distinction is also proposed by Earl, who labels these repression methods “channeling” and “coercion,” cf. Jennifer Earl, “Tanks, Tear Gas and Taxes: Toward a Theory of Movement Repression,” Sociological Theory 21, no. 1 (2003): 44–68.

André Bank, “Rents, Co-optation, and Economized Discourse: Three Dimensions of Political Rule in Jordan, Morocco and Syria,” Journal of Mediterranean Studies 14, nos. 1/2 (2004): 155–180; Josua, “Co-optation” (see note 3 above).

See, e.g., Davenport and Inman, “The State of State Repression Research Since the 1990s” (see note 1 above), 627.

Cf. Boudreau, “Precarious Regimes” (see note 9 above), and “Elections, Repression, and Authoritarian Survival in Post-Transition Indonesia and the Philippines,” The Pacific Review 22, no. 2 (2009): 233–253. As activism carries the connotation of social movements, we prefer the broader term of challenge for describing the threat that leads a government to employ repression.

T. David Mason, “Nonelite Response to State-Sanctioned Terror,” The Western Political Quarterly 42, no. 4 (1989): 467–482.

Ibid.; T. David Mason and Dale A. Krane, “The Political Economy of Death Squads: Toward a Theory of the Impact of State-Sanctioned Terror,” International Studies Quarterly 33, no. 2 (1989): 175–198.

Ibid., 179. This threefold distinction is also mentioned by Christian Davenport, “The Promise of Democratic Pacification: An Empirical Assessment,” International Studies Quarterly 48, no. 3 (2004): 543.

While the subjects of repression according to our definition are state actors, these might even avail themselves of individuals not belonging to the official security forces, so-called thugs. When they are instigated or paid by officials, they can be counted as indirect agents of the state repression apparatus.

Davenport, “State Repression” (see note 12 above); Barbara Geddes, Authoritarian Breakdown: Empirical Test of a Game Theoretic Argument (Los Angeles: University of California in Los Angeles, 1999).

B. Todd Spinks, Emile Sahliyeh, and Brian Calfano, “The Status of Democracy and Human Rights in the Middle East: Does Regime Type Make a Difference?,” Democratization 15, no. 2 (2008): 329ff.

Maria Josua, “The King's Advantage: Legitimität und Legitimierung monarchischer Herrschaft” (presentation at the 31st German Congress of Oriental Studies/17th congress of the German Middle East Studies Association, Marburg, September 2010).

Robert M. Fishman, “Rethinking State and Regime: Southern Europe's Transition to Democracy,” World Politics 42, no. 3 (1990): 428.

Christian Davenport, “The Promise of Democratic Pacification: An Empirical Assessment,” International Studies Quarterly 48, no. 3 (2004): 540; Patrick M. Regan and Errol A. Henderson, “Democracy, Threats and Political Repression in Developing Countries: Are Democracies Internally Less Violent?,” Third World Quarterly 23, no. 1 (2002): 121; Michael Colaresi and Sabine C. Carey, “To Kill or to Protect: Security Forces, Domestic Institutions, and Genocide,” The Journal of Conflict Resolution 52, no. 1 (2008): 39–67.

Christian Davenport and David A. Armstrong, “Democracy and the Violation of Human Rights: A Statistical Analysis from 1976–1996,” American Journal of Political Science 48, no. 3 (2004): 538–554.

Rudoph J. Rummel, Power Kills (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1997); Juan J. Linz, Totalitarian and Authoritarian Regimes (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2000).

Davenport, “State Repression” (see note 12 above). In a similar vein, Cavatorta claims that if co-optation capacities are high, less repression is employed (Francesco Cavatorta, “More Than Repression: Strategies of Regime Survival. The Significance of Divide et Impera in Morocco,” Journal of Contemporary African Studies 25, no. 2 (2007): 187–203).

Davenport, “State Repression” (see note 12 above), 486.

Ibid., 491.

Eva Bellin, “Coercive Institutions and Coercive Leaders,” in Martha Pripstein Posusney and Michele Penner Angrist, eds., Authoritarianism in the Middle East: Regimes and Resistance (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2005), 28.

Max Weber, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft (Tübingen: Mohr, 1947 [1922]).

Eva Bellin, “The Robustness of Authoritarianism in the Middle East: Exceptionalism in Comparative Perspective,” Comparative Politics 36, no. 2 (2004): 139–157. While regime characteristics have an impact on—in Bellin's terminology—both the will and the capacity to coercion, state characteristics influence mainly the capabilities or capacities to coercion.

Understood as a political organization whose “administrative staff successfully upholds the claim to the monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force in the enforcement of its orders” (Weber, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft (see note 40 above), 29, own translation).

Lucan A. Way and Steven Levitsky, “The Dynamics of Autocratic Coercion after the Cold War,” Communist and Post-Communist Studies 39 (2006): 393; cf. also Boudreau, “Precarious Regimes” (see note 9 above).

Michael Albertus and Victor Menaldo, “Coercive Capacity and the Prospects for Democratization,” Comparative Politics 42, no. 2 (2012): 151–169.

Way and Levitsky, “The Dynamics of Autrocratic Coercion” (see note 43 above), 393.

Ibid.

See ibid., 395f.

Ibid., 388.

Ibid., 396.

Ted Robert Gurr, “The Political Origins of State Violence and Terror: A Theoretical Analysis,” in Michael Stohl and George A. Lopez, eds., Government Violence and Repression: An Agenda for Research (New York, Westport, London: Greenwood Press, 1986), 59.

Boudreau, “Precarious Regimes” (see note 9 above); Resisting Dictatorship (see note 14 above); Christian Davenport, “State Repression and Political Order,” Annual Review of Political Science 10 (2007): 1–23.

Charles Tilly, From Mobilization to Revolution (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1978), 106.

Davenport, “The Promise of Democratic Pacification” (see note 27 above); Franklin, “Contentious Challenges and Government Responses in Latin America” (see note 11 above), 710; Steven C. Poe, C. Neal Tate, Linda Camp Keith, and Drew Lanier, “Domestic Threats: The Abuse of Personal Integrity,” in Christian Davenport, ed., Paths to State Repression: Human Rights Violations and Contentious Politics (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2000), 32; Sabine Carey, Protest, Repression and Political Regimes: An Empirical Analysis of Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa (New York: Routledge, 2009).

Franklin, “Contentious Challenges and Government Responses in Latin America” (see note 11 above), 700.

Poe et al., “Domestic Threats” (see note 53 above), 32.

Boudreau, “Precarious Regimes” (see note 9 above), 45.

Franklin, “Domestic Threats” (see note 11 above), 708.

Davenport, “Introduction” (see note 8 above), 5.

Dowding and Kimber, “The Meaning and Use of ‘Political Stability'” (see note 3 above), 235, also make this argument with regard to stability, which they regard as given when the pattern of challenges is at its usual level.

Cf. Davenport, “Introduction” (see note 8 above).

Bellin, “Coercive Institutions” (see note 39 above), 29: “Mowing down thousands of people, even if it is within the physical capacity of the security forces, is a costly prospect. It may jeopardize the institutional integrity of the security apparatus (will the soldiers shoot?); it may jeopardize international support to the regime (will the patron pay?); it may jeopardize the domestic legitimacy of the security forces (will popular opposition be amplified?).”

Bellin, “The Robustness of Authoritarianism” (see note 41 above), 146.

Michael Schmidmayr, Politische Opposition in Bahrain. Stabilität und Wandel in einem autoritären Regime (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2011), 41ff.

http://www.bahrainrights.org/en/node/528.

Schmidmayr, Politische Opposition in Bahrain (see note 63 above), 23.

Bahrain Center for Human Rights, Bahrain: Dangerous Statistics and Facts About the National Security Apparatus, http://www.bahrainrights.org/en/node/2784/.

Bahrain spends about 20% of its budget on its military, which has a size of about 13,000 soldiers. The National Security Agency consists of about 1,000, the National Guard of 1,200. (“Report of the Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry,” presented in Manama, Bahrain, on November 23, 2011.).

Schmidmayr, Politische Opposition in Bahrain (see note 63 above), 67.

Political Terror Scale 2010: http://politicalterrorscale.org/.

Schmidmayr, Politische Opposition in Bahrain (see note 63 above), 20.

Human Rights Watch, Torture Redux: The Revival of Physical Coercion During Interrogations in Bahrain, February 2010, http://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/reports/bahrain0210webwcover.pdf.

International Crisis Group, “Popular Protest in North Africa and the Middle East (III): The Bahrain Revolt,” Middle East/North Africa Report No. 105, April 6, 2011.

Martin Chulov and Mark Tran, “Bahrain Soldiers Fire on Protesters,” The Guardian, February 18, 2011, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/feb/18/bahrain-soldiers-fire-on-protesters.

Martin Chulov, “Bahrain Arrests Six Opposition Leaders for ‘Contacting Foreign Agents,’” The Guardian, March 17, 2011, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/mar/17/bahrain-arrests-opposition-leaders-crackdown; Martin Chulov, “America Rebukes Bahrain After Violent Crackdown on Demonstrators,” The Guardian, March 16, 2011, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/mar/16/five-die-bahrain-crackdown.

Human Rights Watch, No Justice in Bahrain: Unfair Trial in Military and Civilian Courts. February 2012, http://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/reports/bahrain0212webwcover.pdf.

Press Freedom Index 2011/2012, http://en.rsf.org/press-freedom-index-2011-2012,1043.html.

Sanja Kelly and Sarah Cook, New Technologies, Innovative Repression: Growing Threats to Internet Freedom, Freedom House, 2011, 2, http://www.freedomhouse.org/sites/default/files/inline_images/Overview%20essay%20FINAL%204%2014%202011.pdf.

Kristian Coates Ulrichsen, “Bahrain's Uncertain Future,” Foreign Policy.com, November 23, 2011, http://mideast.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2011/11/23/bahrain_s_uncertain_future.

Bahrain's Human Rights Organizations, “Bahrain: The Human Price of Freedom and Justice: A Joint Report on Human Rights Violations in Bahrain,” Bahrain Center for Human Rights, Bahrain Youth Society for Human Rights, Bahrain Human Rights Society, November 22, 2011, http://bahrainrights.hopto.org/BCHR/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/BahrainTheHumanPrice.pdf.

“Bahrain's Shias Demand Reform at Mass Rally,” Al Jazeera, March 10, 2012, http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2012/03/201239144334860869.html.

Mark Sedgwick, “Measuring Egyptian Regime Legitimacy,” Middle East Critique 19, no. 3 (2010): 251–267.

Torsten Matzke, “Wachstumspolitik für eine reiche Minderheit: Zu den sozioökonomischen Hintergründen der ägyptischen Revolution,” in Holger Albrecht and Thomas Demmelhuber, eds., Revolution und Regimewandel in Ägypten (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2013), 111–140.

Saad el-Din Ibrahim, “Has Egypt Become a Police State?,” Egypt Independent, December 20, 2010, http://www.egyptindependent.com/node/276358.

The personnel of the armed forces totaled 865,500 as of 2009 (http://www.indexmundi.com/facts/egypt/armed-forces-personnel), making up 3.26% of the total labor force. Military expenditure made up 7.11% of central government expenditure or 2.00% of the GDP in 2010.

Steven A. Cook, The Struggle for Egypt: From Nasser to Tahrir Square (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 195ff.

Ibid., 195.

Sedgwick, “Measuring Egyptian Regime Legitimacy” (see note 81 above), 266.

Wael Ghonim, Revolution 2.0. The Power of the People is Greater Than the People in Power: A Memoir (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012), 123.

Mohamed Elmeshad, “NGO Demands Investigation into Deaths of Over 100 Prisoners in Custody,” Egypt Independent, September 11, 2011, http://www.egyptindependent.com/news/ngo-demands-investigation-deaths-over-100-prisoners-custody.

“Fresh Protests Erupt in Egypt,” Al Jazeera, January 28, 2011, http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2011/01/201112810059478272.html.

Cook, The Struggle for Egypt (see note 85 above), 288f.

Evan Hill and Muhammad Mansour, “Egypt's Army Took Part in Torture and Killings During Revolution, Report Shows,” The Guardian, April 10, 2013, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/apr/10/egypt-army-torture-killings-revolution.

Cook, The Struggle for Egypt (see note 85 above), 296.

Al-Masry Al-Youm, “Fact-Finding Committee Investigates Protester Detentions,” Egypt Independent, July 12, 2012, http://www.egyptindependent.com/news/fact-finding-committee-investigates-protester-detentions.

They have been released by now; some 3,000 prisoners were pardoned on the revolution's first anniversary.

Salma Shukrallah, “We Are Targeted by Police and Army for Treating Demonstrators: Egypt Doctors,” Ahram Online, December 26, 2011, http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/1/0/30199/Egypt/0/We-are-targeted-by-police-and-army-for-treating-de.aspx.

In November 2011, a police officer who allegedly targeted the eyes of demonstrators, injuring sixty of them, was charged in court.

See Ahram Online's timeline, http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/1/64/34046/Egypt/Politics-/Year-of-the-SCAF-a-timeline-of-mounting-repression.aspx.

Cf. also Eva Bellin, “Reconsidering the Robustness of Authoritarianism in the Middle East: Lessons from the Arab Spring,” Comparative Politics 44, no. 2 (2012): 131.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Maria Josua

Maria Josua is a Research Associate and Lecturer at the Research Unit on Middle East and Comparative Politics, Institute of Political Science, University of Tuebingen.

Mirjam Edel

Mirjam Edel is a Researcher at the Research Unit on Middle East and Comparative Politics, Institute of Political Science, University of Tuebingen.