The effect of repression on protest

In this chapter, we investigate how government repression affected challengers’ protest mobilization. While most of the challengers’ actions were peaceful, and violence basically non-existent, governments adopted some degree of repressive measures across all countries. Repression however, did not significantly alter the repertoire of actions which tended to remain moderate without showing any form of radicalization throughout the episodes. The only change in the forms of action due to repression concerned radical actions that were slightly reduced due to repression. This was especially apparent for Greece, where repression decreased the likelihood of confrontational actions, i.e. occupations by trade unions. The effect of repression changed across types of challengers and across specific dimensions of the context, too. Repression mainly affected institutional actors such as political parties whose participation in protests significantly decreased. In addition, repression had a stronger dampening effect on conventional actions under right-wing governments. Finally, repression dampened protests when no international actors intervened in domestic politics.