Student protest, violent interactions, and state repression
| Published date | 01 January 2025 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/00223433231198132 |
| Author | Ayal Feinberg,Idean Salehyan |
| Date | 01 January 2025 |
https://doi.org/10.1177/00223433231198132
Journal of Peace Research
2025, Vol. 62(1) 85 –101
© The Author(s) 2023
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DOI: 10.1177/00223433231198132
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1225162JPR0010.1177/00223433231198132Journal of Peace ResearchFeinberg & Salehyan
research-article2023
Regular Article
Student protest, violent interactions,
and state repression
Ayal Feinberg
Center for Holocaust Studies and Human Rights, Gratz College
Idean Salehyan
Department of Political Science, University of North Texas
Abstract
Why do states use violence to repress dissent? When do opposition groups escalate conflict by employing violent
tactics? We argue that not all opposition groups are created alike, and that understanding who is involved in
protest is important for event outcomes. Because of their age and social status, student protesters are more likely to
adopt confrontational behaviors, even when engaged in nominally peaceful protest. As such, students are more
likely to be seen as threats by security forces tasked with responding to social unrest. Although frequently
unplanned, spontaneous interactions between dissidents and regime forces can lead to an escalatory spiral. As
such, we expect that student protests are more likely to escalate to violence than protests by other actors, and that
security forces are more likely to use repression against students. This relationship will be especially pronounced
when youth unemployment is high, leading to heightened grievances and fewer social constraints. Using event
data combined with actor information on protest dynamics across seven countries in Africa and Latin America
from 1990 to 2016, we find that although student groups are not more likely to engage in riots at the outset, when
they do protest, violent interactions with police are more likely. Moreover, youth unemployment significantly
increases the potential for violence.
Keywords
conflict escalation, protest, repression, riots, students
When do protests turn into violent interactions
between opposition groups and security forces? Most
of the time, protests remain orderly and peaceful, but
other times they result in violence through repressive
actions by the state, escalation by demonstrators, or a
combination of both. Two examples from Kenya serve
to illustrate these contrasting dynamics. In November
2019, a group of students at Jomo Kenyatta University
near Nairobi protested the killing of a classmate by
armed bandits and the police’s failure to provide
adequate security. In response to this demonstration,
police brutally beat students, and video footage of
the incident went viral on social media. This pro-
voked further rounds of protest and violent clashes
between students and security forces, which led author-
ities to temporarily close Jomo Kenyatta University
(Capron, 2019). In contrast , in June 2019, a group
of environmental activists peacefully marched through
Nairobi to protest a project to build Kenya’s first coal
power station near the Lamu archipelago – a tourist
destination and UNESCO World Heritage site.
While the government argued the plant would spur
economic growth and expand Kenya’s energy supply,
campaigners insisted that it would cause unnecessary
environmental damage. Yet, the peaceful march
passed without incident, and the project was paused
until further review by the courts (McVeigh, 2019).
Why did authorities in Kenya respond forcefully to
Corresponding author:
idean@unt.edu
86 journal of P R 62(1)
one set of protests involving students while allowing
environmental activists to freely demonstrate?
In this article, we seek to address the reasons why
social conflicts turn violent. In particular, we explore
three distinct outcomes: (1) protests that are violent from
the outset (i.e. riots); (2) the escalation from nonviolent
to violent tactics; and (3) repression by security forces.
We argue that a key element for understanding violent
and nonviolent interactions is the type(s) of partici-
pant(s) in the event. While the issues at stake, location,
size of protest, and so on, are indeed important, it is also
essential to know who is participating.
We argue that because of their social status and low
opportunity costs, some groups are more likely to adopt
behaviors, symbols, slogans, and imagery that are threa-
tening to authorities, even if the protest or demonstra-
tion is nominally ‘nonviolent’. We call this,
confrontational modes of dissent. In addition, we con-
tend that confrontational forms of dissent are often dri-
ven by situational tensions on the ground and the
inability of event organizers to control their followers,
rather than being a pre-planned, strategic choice. Such
confrontational tactics, in turn, may lead to heightened
tensions and the potential for violence between protest-
ers and security forces.
Student protesters, we argue, are relatively more likely
to adopt confrontational tactics, which in turn facilitates
spontaneous interactions that lead to violence. Protesters
in their teens and early twenties – often high school or
college students – frequently engage in significant acts of
dissent. Campuses are where large groups of people –
many of whom are young and idealistic – frequently
congregate to discuss ideas and social issues (Lipset,
1993; Soule, 1997). Student movements in a variety of
countries such as China (Zhao, 2004), Egypt (Abdalla,
2008), Kenya (Amutabi, 2002), and Nigeria (Omonijo
et al., 2014) have demanded political, educational, eco-
nomic, and environmental reform, and are often at the
vanguard of social change. Yet, because of their lower
opportunity costs – students are often unemployed and
do not have children – and higher tolerance of risk
(Steinberg, 2004; Galvan et al., 2006), they are more
likely to engage in confrontational behavior. As Stein-
berg (2010: 222) notes, ‘there is a long history of anec-
dotal evidence, empirical investigation, and actuarial
analysis indicating that adolescence is a time of heigh-
tened risk-taking and recklessness’.
Additionally, we argue that in contrast to the typical
strategic choice approach, violent versus nonviolent
behaviors are frequently not a product of conscious deci-
sionmaking by event planners. As Dudouet (2013: 407)
explains, the rational choice model assumes that ‘move-
ment leaders select the primary means of struggle accord-
ing to a careful calculation of the comparative
effectiveness of armed versu s unarmed strategies’. We
hold that while the use of violence is sometimes a delib-
erate choice, front-line interactions between individual
protesters and security forces can spark heated, ‘spur-of-
the-moment’ confrontations, leading to escalatory
dynamics that may lead to rioting, repression, or both
(Ives & Lewis, 2020; Earl & Soule, 2006). Therefore, we
do not expect student organizers to plan violence at the
outset more frequently than other types of actors; but
when youth do take to the streets, interactions with
security forces are more likely to provoke violent clashes
as certain protesters adopt behaviors that are not neces-
sarily condoned by organizers. Finally, we argue that
these tensions are especially likely to give rise to conflict
and violence as youth unemployment – a key source of
grievance – increases.
We develop these arguments further in this article and
conduct an empirical analysis of social conflicts in seven
Latin American and African countries, exhibiting a vari-
ety of social and political contexts. In the next section,
we address previous literature on violent and nonviolent
protests. Then we turn to our main argument, focusing
on the particular dynamics of student protest. Next, we
analyze data on thousands of protests across a diverse set
of countries from 1990 to 2016. Specifically, we use the
Social Conflict Analysis Database (SCAD) (Salehyan
et al., 2012), along with the SCAD-Organizational Prop-
erties extension (SCAD-OPs) (Salehyan, Feinberg &
Naughton, 2020), to examine three interrelated depen-
dent variables: the use of violence at the outset of social
conflict (i.e. riots), the escalation of nonviolent protest to
violent riots, and the use of repression by security and
police forces. After presenting our first set of models, we
also interact student protest with youth unemployment
as violent escalation may be especially likely in contexts
where students face few employment opportunities. The
final section offers concluding remarks and directions for
future research on protest, violence, and repression.
The literature on protest, violence, and student
activism
In recent years, there has been a burgeoning literature on
contentious politics, which considers both violent and
nonviolent protest behavior (Stephan & Chenoweth,
2011; Schock, 2013; Thomas & Louis, 2014; Cheno-
weth, Perkoski & Kang, 2017). Rather than viewing civil
wars, riots, and peaceful protests as separate phenomena,
2journal of PEACE RESEARCH XX(X)
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