This event is co-hosted by the NYU Politics Department, and is part of the NYU Politics Department’s Comparative Politics Speaker Series.
Does preventive repression bolster, or does that dissent despite obstruction? While a large literature recognizes the importance of preventive repression for authoritarian stability, we know very little about its effects on public opinion. To gain traction on this question Professor Katerina Tertychnaya draws on evidence from unusually detailed data on unauthorized and authorized protest from Russia and an original survey experiment. She shows that when the authorities engage in preventive repression, such as when they deny protest authorizations, protesters’ ability to generate support is compromised. Preventive repression also conditions the effect of demonstrator tactics on public opinion. These effects, however, are contingent on citizen attitudes about the law and the authorities. Findings, which provide the first causal test of the mass opinion effects of preventive repression, expand understanding of the consequences and audiences of preventive repression and have implications for studies of authoritarian resilience.
Katerina Tertytchnaya is Assistant Professor of Comparative Politics at University College London. Her research interests include political behaviour, protest, and authoritarian politics with emphasis on contemporary Russia. Her book project examines how contemporary authoritarian regimes use strategies of nonviolent repression to lower the costs of staying in power. She is the recipient of a UKRI New Investigator grant. Her research has been published in the American Political Science Review, Journal of Politics, Comparative Political Studies, and Post-Soviet Affairs, among others. She has contributed work to the Monkey Cage, at the Washington Post, and Republic.ru. Previously, she was a Junior Research Fellow at the University of Oxford and a Fulbright-Schuman predoctoral fellow at Columbia.
Watch the event recording on YouTube here.
