IS THE SEED OF REVOLUTION REPRESSION? A quantitative study of the relationship between government repression and anti-government mass mobilization

Abstract: Throughout history, authoritarian regimes have used repression to avoid the opposition to flourish and to retain power. However, in the case of the protests for Mahsa Amini against the regime in Iran, it has been demonstrated that government repression instead, can be positively associated with anti-government mass mobilization. Previous research is divided into two groups of scholars. First group considers that anti-government mass mobilization will decrease as a result of repression, while the second group consider that mobilization will increase as a result of repression. The purpose of the paper is to examine if repression in authoritarian regimes will lead to an increase in anti-government mass mobilization. The research question “Is repression positively associated with anti-government mass- mobilization?” will be investigated through a time series cross-section analysis with data from MMAD covering 92 countries and their protest events between the years 2003-2019. The empirical findings from the main analysis and the first robustness test did not find evidence to support the hypothesis “when authoritarian regimes increase their level of repression, it increases the likelihood of anti-government mass mobilization”. The result from the second robustness test presents a negative significant relationship between the dependent and independent variables which will give tentative evidence that the hypothesis is correct. Since two of the three empirical tests do not confirm the hypothesis, I reject the hypothesis for now. Future studies should focus on the different levels of repression and the mechanism that motivates the protesters to continue in the face of repression.