Pamela E. Oliver
Professor of Sociology

Repression & Policing

Repression Dynamics

  1. Zwerman, G., P. G. Steinhoff, et al. (2000). “Disappearing Social Movements: Clandestinity in the Cycle of New Left Protest in the U.S., Japan, Germany, and Italy.” Mobilization 5(1): 85-104. Research on social movements has paid little attention to the dynamics of clandestine mobilization as an integral element of protest cycles. Here, studies of 16 New Left clandestine groups in Germany, Italy, Japan, & the US demonstrate strong commonalities in the processes of going underground & staying underground. Activists move from the public to the clandestine realm as a result of increased repression at the protest cycle’s peak, commitment to specific ideological frames, & personal ties. Identity conflicts specific to underground roles & other aspects of underground life influence the nature of clandestine violence, further affecting the protest cycle’s course. 1 Table, 56 References. Adapted from the source document
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  3. Titarenko, L., J. D. McCarthy, et al. (2001). “The Interaction of State Repression, Protest Form and Protest Sponsor Strength during the Transition from Communism in Minsk, Belarus, 1990-1995.” Mobilization 6(2): 129-150. The waves of public protest events that accompanied the early years of the transition from communism in the former Soviet republic of Belarus offer the opportunity to explore the short-term interaction between state repression & the ongoing choice of protest form by challengers. Using police (militia) records of public protest events, 1990-1995, we examine the evolving choice of protest form by collective actors in Belarus. We develop expectations about how the strength of social actors interacts with the extent & form of state repression in shaping protest form. Analyses show that as democratic access expanded & state repression waned during a “democratic opening” weak collective actors came to dominate the protest arena, staging mostly pickets & vigils. As state repression escalated, however, strong collective actors reentered the protest arena, but, in response to the escalating state repression, employed mostly the picket/vigil protest form that, during less repressive times, had been the weapon of weak collective actors.
  4. Rasler, Karen “Concessions, Repression, and Political Protest in the Iranian Revolution” American Sociological Review; 1996, 61, 1, Feb, 132-152. Quantitative analysis of interactions between protest and state actions. Repression had short term negative and long term positive effects on mobilization. PDF file.
  5. McAdam, Doug (1983). “Tactical Innovation and the Pace of Insurgency.” American Sociological Review 48(6): 735-754. MS 340-356. PDF File This was a crucial article setting off a lot of this analysis. Argues that upsurges in mobilization are due to tactical innovations, which are brought down by regimes learning how to respond.
  6. Koopmans, Ruud Dynamics of Repression and Mobilization: The German Extreme Right in the 1990s. Mobilization; 1997, 2, 2, Sept, 149-164. Examines the relationship between repression & mobilization in the context of the mobilization of the German extreme Right & the different forms of repression that state authorities have reactively applied, drawing on a content analysis of every second issue of the national daily newspaper, Frankfurter Rundschau 1991-1994. Cross-sectional & diachronic analysis reveal that the impacts of institutional & situational repression on violent & nonviolent mobilzation are very different. Situational police repression of events has an escalating effect, but institutional repression (eg, bans, trials, or court rulings against activists) has a negative impact. Reasons for the effectiveness of institutional repression, including degree of consistency & legitimacy, are discussed. 3 Tables, 1 Figure, 28 References. ,PDF file
  7. Olzak, S., M. Beasley, et al. (2003). “The Impact of State Reforms on Protest against Apartheid in South Africa.” Mobilization 8(1): 27-50. From 1970 to 1985, South Africa vacillated between reform & reaffirmation of the repressive regime known as apartheid. Did these reforms slow the pace of protest, or did they facilitate protest, by intensifying discontent? Using event-history data on anti-apartheid protest we suggest that passage of reforms will increase the pace of protest while state repression will dampen it. We further hypothesize that the nature & scope of each reform would differentially affect protest by each of three official racial populations: Black Africans, Coloureds, & Asian Indians. As expected, reforms that integrated housing & jobs & reforms that legitimated the rights of black labor unions propelled protest by Black Africans against apartheid, but so did reforms that excluded Black Africans from citizenship. In contrast, relatively few reforms affected the rate of protest by Asian Indians & Coloured population groups. Finally, we found that repression decreased rates of protest significantly for all three groups. 2 Tables, 1 Figure, 2 Appendixes, 92 References. Adapted from the source document.
  8.  Karl-Dieter Opp and Wolfgang Roehl. “Repression, Micromobilization, and Political Protest.” MS 190-206. Social Forces 69: 521-547. 1990. Argues that repression has a direct negative effect on mobilization, but can have an indirect positive effect on protest through radicalization, if the repression is perceived as illegitimate. JSTOR Stable URL

Skocpol, Theda. 2008 [1979]. States and Social Revolution. Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press. Pp.112-157 (Ch. 3: Agrarian Structures and Peasant Insurrections)

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1dbG5d4W4eG1YVujhWYjmNuZxTkZIbM3Y (Links to an external site.)

Zuo, Jiping, and Robert D. Benford. 1995. Mobilization Processes and the 1989 Chinese Democracy Movement. Sociological Quarterly, 36, 131–56.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/4121281?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents

Repression and Media

  1. (*) Wisler, D. and M. Giugni (1999). “Under the Spotlight: The Impact of Media Attention on Protest Policing.” Mobilization 4(2): 171-187. Analysis of data on protest policing & its media coverage in four Swiss cities, 1965-1994, suggests that the mass media do have an impact on levels & forms of repression, along with political opportunity dimensions & levels of disruption. Two specific mechanisms are identified: (1) The symbolic battles waged by protest groups & their outcomes affect the level of repression that these groups face; depending on whether the civil-rights or the law-&-order scenario wins in the public sphere, the police adopt different postures when facing disorders. (2) The police are vulnerable to an increase of media attention during a protest campaign; when protest becomes a blind spot in the public sphere, repression increases.
  2. (*) Davenport, C. and M. Eads (2001). “Cued to Coerce or Coercing Cues? An Exploration of Dissident Rhetoric and Its Relationship to Political Repression.” Mobilization 6(2): 151-171. This article explores whether & how state repression is influenced by a social movement organization’s rhetoric; &, conversely, if dissident rhetoric is responsive to authorities’ repressive efforts. These relationships are examined with data generated from several newspapers within the Bay area, across 253 weeks, 1969-1973, concerning rhetoric of the Black Panther Party (BPP) as well as police & court repression directed against the Panther organization. The results of the statistical analysis are mixed. Several aspects of BPP rhetoric increase both police- & court-ordered repression, albeit at different magnitudes & lags. Moreover, results disclose that only police repression influences the discussion of particular topics in the Panther newspaper – the same topics that induce protest policing (again, across different lags). The analysis complements existing research on the conflict-repression nexus, but it also forces us to consider state-dissident interactions in a more comprehensive manner. 3 Tables, 1 Figure, 2 Appendixes, 101 References. Adapted from the source document.

Other Repression Forms

  1. Steven Barkan. “Legal Control of the Southern Civil Rights Movement.” MS 384-396. American Sociological Review 49: 552-565. 1984.
  2. John D. McCarthy, David Britt, and Mark Wolfson. “The Institutional Channeling of Social Movements by the State in the United States.” Research in Social Movements, Conflicts and Change 13: 45-76. 1991. Tax laws, postal regulations, etc. channel SMOs into legal, tame formations. I have copies of this.
  3. Gary Marx. 1979. “External Efforts to Damage or Facilitate Social Movements: Some Patterns, Explanations, Outcomes, and Complications.” In Mayer Zald and John D. McCarthy, The Dynamics of Social Movements. (He also has an old 1975 AJS article on agents provocateurs etc.) An inventory of methods. also BC 360-384.
  4. Marx, G. T. (1974). “Thoughts on a Neglected Category of Social Movement Participant: The Agent Provocateur and the Informant.” American Journal of Sociology 80(2): 402-442. The hitherto unexplored phenomenon of the informant as used by authorities in response to social movements is examined. A distinction must be made between the informant who merely gathers information & the agent provocateur who actively tries to influence the actions of the group he investigates. 24 recent examples are reviewed. Information is available on 34 cases: 11 involved white campus groups; 11, predominantly white peace groups &/or economic groups; 10, Chicano or black groups; & only 2, right-wing groups. Unlike the regular policeman or FBI agent, who is simply doing a job he is paid to do, the civilian agent can have a variety of motives. Among those discussed are: patriotism, coercion (as a result of arrest or threatened arrest), financial reward, & activist disaffection. In addition, there are double agents, those who convert to the movement they are investigating, & finally, the agent provocateur. Those attracted to play such roles may be unreliable in the first place; deception is aided by the secrecy inherent in the role; & “discovering” evidence which would serve to justify his role could help the agent to alleviate any guilt or conflict he may have about the role. The agent’s entry to a group & rise to leadership can be facilitated by the often small size of the group & its lack of resources & people willing to do the necessary routine & time consuming tasks. Agents are usually exposed when they appear as prosecution witnesses, or when they are neither charged or arrested during raids; their reactions are discussed. Damaging effects of the agent on the group, such as when he contributes to violence or illegality associated with the group, are described; even when the agent is passive, the nature of the group is necessarily changed by the presence of specious activist. If, in response to feeling threatened by dissenting groups, a society expands its social control apparatus, new dissent & violence are created. This may be partly because of a shift in the boundaries of behavior seen as legitimate, or because there is new protest to the new restrictions. The investigative agency’s need to perpetuate & justify itself contributes to the expansion of its resources & influence. When the authorities blur the distinction between crime & politics, police may bring their experience with the use of informants, infiltration, or entrapment to bear on political groups, in spite of the important differences between crime & politics. The process of definition in which the behavior of some groups is singled out & viewed as subversive (perhaps those having world views unlike those of the authorities) is an important area for study. The latent reason or consequence for using agents may be to harass or control groups considered to be subversive (although they are not technically violating any laws), while civil liberties appear to remain intact. The events noted are an indication of a trend toward the more centralized policing of politics characteristic of Europe. “The growing capacity to gather information may also increase the capacity clandestinely to influence events.” H. Dorian.

Policing

Policing Overviews

  1. Della Porta, Donatella and Olivier Fillieule (2004). Policing Social Protest. The Blackwell Companion to Social Movements. D. A. Snow, S. A. Soule and H. Kriesi. Malden, MA and Oxford, UK, Blackwell Publishing: 217-241.
    changing patterns of policing. police characteristics and policing styles. consequences of policing.
  2. Donatella Della Porta and Herbert Reiter, editors. Policing Protest: The Control of Mass Demonstrations in Western Democracies. University of Minnesota Press. 1998. This collection has excellent articles.
    1. Introduction (della Porta & Reiter, Policing of protest in Western democracies ),
    2. *Chapter 2 (McPhail et al., Policing protest in the United States: 1960-1995 ), and
    3. * Chapter 10 (della Porta Police knowledge and protest policing) are in electronic reserves.

Policing Cases

  1. White, R. W. (1999). “Comparing State Repression of Pro-State Vigilantes and Anti-State Insurgents: Northern Ireland, 1972-75.” Mobilization 4(2): 189-202. https://mobilizationjournal.org/doi/abs/10.17813/maiq.4.2.w37v18p176754jv4 Secondary empirical & statistical data are drawn on to compare the repression of pro-state paramilitary violence with that of anti-state insurgent violence in Northern Ireland, 1972-1975. During this time period, pro-state Protestant paramilitaries & anti-state Irish Republican paramilitaries engaged in significant levels of violence. Among the state’s responses to this violence were the internment, without charge or trial, of suspected paramilitaries, & the confiscation of illegally held weapons. How the state used these methods of repression differently for Protestant paramilitaries vs Republican insurgents is examined with time-series regression methods, employing data collected at monthly intervals. In general, the state was less repressive of Protestant paramilitaries; instances of their repression tended to reflect attempts by the state to find a political solution to the violence (by both Protestant paramilitaries & Republican paramilitaries) rather than Protestant paramilitary violence per se. In contrast, the state’s repression of Republicans was more forceful & more directly linked to Republican violence. 3 Tables, 48 References. Library Reserves: White, Comparing state repression of pro-state vigilantes and anti-state insurgents
  2. Policing Protest in France and Italy: From Intimidation to Cooperation? Donatella della Porta, Olivier Fillieule, and Herbert Reiter in David Meyer & Sidney Tarrow, eds, The Social Movement Society : Contentious Politics for a New Century. Rowman & Littlefield.
  3. Della Porta, D. (1996). Social Movements and the State: Thoughts on the Policing of Protest. CP: 62-92. Changes in the policing of protest, detailed case information on Italy and Germany. Her main point is the need for an interactive model, as the state changes in response to movements as much as movements change in response to the state.
  4. della Porta, Donatella, Olivier Fillieule, and Herbert Reiter. 1998. Policing Protest in France and Italy: From Intimidation to Cooperation. In David S. Meyer and Sidney Tarrow (eds.), The Social Movement Society: Contentious Politics for a New Century. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 111–30. LINK