Windows of repression: Using COVID-19 policies against political dissidents?
| Published date | 01 January 2022 |
| DOI | 10.1177/00223433211062389 |
| Author | Joan Barceló,Robert Kubinec,Luca Messerschmidt,Tiril Høye Rahn,Cindy Cheng |
| Date | 01 January 2022 |
| Subject Matter | Regular Articles |
Windows of repression: Using COVID-19
policies against political dissidents?
Joan Barcelo
´
Division of Social Sciences, New York
University - Abu Dhabi
Robert Kubinec
Division of Social Sciences, New York
University - Abu Dhabi
Cindy Cheng
Hochschule fu
¨r Politik at the Technical
University of Munich (TUM) and the TUM
School of Social Sciences and Technology
Tiril Høye Rahn
Division of Social Sciences, New York
University - Abu Dhabi; University
of Oxford
Luca Messerschmidt
Hochschule fu
¨r Politik at the Technical
University of Munich (TUM) and the TUM
School of Social Sciences and Technology
Abstract
What explains the great variation in the adoption, timing, and duration of government policies made in response to
the COVID-19 pandemic? In this article, we explore whether government incentives to repress domestic dissidents
influence their responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. We argue that COVID-19 containment policies are obser-
vationally equivalent to those that abusive governments use to limit domestic dissent – that is, policies that restrict
citizens’ freedom of movement. This creates an opportunity for abusive governments to engage in repressive behavior
without countervailing pressure from citizens and the international community. Following this logic, we expect
abusive governments to be more likely to adopt restrictive policies, adopt them earlier in the course of the pandemic,
and take longer to relax restrictions. Empirically, we find that governments that have recently engaged in state
violence against civilians or abused citizens’ human rights were about 10% more likely to enact lockdown and curfew
policies. Compared to less repressive countries, these policies were implemented approximately 48 days earlier in the
pandemic and kept in place for approximately 23 days longer. Overall, our results advance our understanding of how
the repressiveness of state institutions can shape policy responses to a global health crisis.
Keywords
COVID-19, health policy, human rights, pandemic, state repression
Introduction
Emergency powers should not be a weapon govern-
ments can wield to quash dissent, control the popula-
tion, and even perpetuate their time in power.
— Michelle Bachelet, UN High Commissioner for
Human Rights, 27 April 2020
Governments around the world have adopted a variety of
policies to limit the spread of the COVID-19 virus,
many of which restrict citizens’ rights and civil liberties.
By late April 2020 in the Philippines for example, over
120,000 people were cited for quarantine violations and
over 30,000 were arrested over COVID-19 related
breaches. Instead of issuing citations to alleged violators,
the Philippine police threatened to arrest them
Corresponding author:
joan.barcelo@nyu.edu
Journal of Peace Research
2022, Vol. 59(1) 73–89
ªThe Author(s) 2022
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/00223433211062389
journals.sagepub.com/home/jpr
immediately. In Peru, President Martı
´nVizcarramobi-
lized the army and policy to enforce one of the earliest
COVID-19 lockdowns in Latin America on 16 March
2020. In contrast, far from enforcing a strict lockdown,
the Swedish government, as well as other Scandinavian
governments, allowed the vast majority of their popula-
tions to engage in voluntary social distancing. What
explains the great variation in the adoption, timing, and
duration of policies made in response to the COVID-19
pandemic?
We argue that the global COVID-19 pandemic has
created a scenario that impairs the international commu-
nity and citizens’ capacity to exert pressure on states to
limit violent actions against civilians. Policies implemen-
ted to fight against the spread of the disease are observa-
tionally equivalent – or sufficiently observationally similar
to be distinguished only with great uncertainty – to
policies commonly used to fight domestic dissent,
including curfew and lockdown policies. This observa-
tional equivalence or similarity limits the capacity of the
international community and citizens to exert pressure
over repressive regimes. Hence, governments that have
underlying incentives to oppress their citizens can take
advantage of the global health crisis to strengthen repres-
sive measures to control domestic dissidents without
bearing the costs of greater international and domestic
pressure.
Following this logic, we hypothesize three connected
processes. First, in the wake of the global pandemic,
governments with a history of repressing citizens are
more likely to order restrictive preventive measures at all
compared to governments that do not. Similarly, repres-
sive governments also have greater incentives to embrace
restrictive policies earlier because such policies not only
allow them to achieve public health objectives, but also
allow them to respond to domestic dissent. And, finally,
governments with a history of repressing citizens are also
more likely to impose these policies for longer periods
compared to governments that do not.
To evaluate our hypotheses, we make use of the
CoronaNet Government Response Dataset (CoronaNet)
with data collected until 31 August 2020 (Cheng et al.,
2020). We complement this dataset with geo-located
information on violence against civilians reported in the
Armed Conflict Location and Event Dataset (ACLED)
(Raleigh et al., 2010) and the Latent Human Rights
Protection Scores (e.g. Fariss, Kenwick & Reuning,
2020).
Based on a variety of statistical models and model
specifications, we find that abusive governments are
between 10% and 15% more likely to restrict citizens’
freedom of movement through stay-at-home orders
compared to non-abusive governments. Furthermore,
abusive governments are more likely to implement
restrictive policies earlier in the pandemic by approxi-
mately 48 days and to keep them in place by an addi-
tional 23 days compared to non-abusive governments.
Our results have implications for understanding how
the repressiveness of state institutions shapes policy
responses to a global health crisis, which speaks to several
strands of literature. First, it builds on the rich literature
studying the behavioral and institutional causes and con-
sequences of various forms of political violence, includ-
ing wartime violence, terrorist attacks, rioting, and state
repression (Balcells & Stanton, 2020). In a recent con-
tribution, Aksoy, Menger & Tavits (2020) specifically
evaluate the political consequences of curfews in Turkey,
showing that curfews increase support by the majority
group for the ruling party, while having the opposite
effect on the minority group. Closer to this article,
Grasse, Pavlik & Matfess (2020) show that African
countries have intensified their repressive campaigns
after imposing lockdowns. Our research complements
this work by arguing that the COVID-19 public health
emergency has opened a window of opportunity for gov-
ernments to engage in repressive behavior without coun-
tervailing pressure from citizens and the international
community. Additionally, our empirical evidence show-
ing that abusive governments are more likely adopt stay-
at-home orders is fully consistent with Grasse et al.’s
(2020) results showing that lockdowns, once adopted,
serve to intensify state violence in areas of dissent.
Second, it speaks to the literature on the dynamics of
political violence in the context of natural disasters.
Some work considers when and how droughts, floods,
earthquakes, and other disasters impact political violence
with no clearcut consensus (e.g. Koubi, 2019; Lehrs,
2020). Other work on disasters has looked at their effects
on violence with evidence showing that disasters reduce
conflict in the short term (Haer & RezaeeDaryakenari,
2022), and increase the chances of rebel groups seeking
negotiations with the government (Nemeth & Lai,
2022). Similarly, Koehnlein & Koren (2022) show that
COVID-19 prevalence increases the likelihood of attacks
against civilians by pro-government non-state actors. We
specifically contribute to this literature by showing that
states’ response to a global health disaster depends on
their pre-existing incentives to repress domestic dissent.
This article also contributes to the emerging literature
of the causes and consequences of the COVID-19 pan-
demic. Social scientists have, thus far, provided a wealth
of research on the social and political correlates of
74 journal of PEACE RESEARCH 59(1)
To continue reading
Request your trial