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ID: 165406

Psychology of state repression: fear and dissent decisions in Zimbabwe / Young, Lauren E

Young, Lauren E	Journal Article
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Summary/Abstract

Many authoritarian regimes use frightening acts of repression to suppress dissent. Theory from psychology suggests that emotions should affect how citizens perceive and process information about repression risk and ultimately whether or not they dissent. I test the effects of emotions on dissent in autocracy by running a lab-in-the-field experiment with 671 opposition supporters in Zimbabwe that randomly assigns some participants to an exercise that induces a mild state of fear, whereas others complete a neutral placebo. The fear treatment significantly reduces hypothetical and behavioral measures of dissent by substantively large amounts. It also increases pessimism about parameters that enter into the dissent decision as well as risk aversion. These results show that emotions interact in important ways with strategic considerations. Fear may be a powerful component of how unpopular autocrats exclude large portions of their populations from mobilizing for regime change.

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Zimbabwe ; Psychology of State Repressio

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ID: 180814

Social Origins of Dictatorships: Elite Networks and Political Transitions in Haiti / Naidu, Suresh; Robinson, James A ; Young, Lauren E.

Robinson, James A	Journal Article
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Summary/Abstract

Existing theories of democratic reversals emphasize that elites mount actions like coups when democracy is particularly threatening to their interests. However, existing theory has been largely silent on the role of elite social networks, which interact with economic incentives and may facilitate antidemocratic collective action. We develop a model where coups generate rents for elites and show that the effort an elite puts into a coup is increasing in their network centrality. We empirically explore the model using an original dataset of Haitian elite networks that we linked to firm-level data. We show that central families were more likely to be accused of participating in the 1991 coup against the democratic Aristide government. We then find that the retail prices of staple goods that are imported by such elites differentially increase during subsequent periods of nondemocracy. Our results suggest that elite social structure is an important factor in democratic reversals.

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