Doctoral Disseration Research in Political Science: A Theory and a Model of State-Dissident Interactions

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This dissertation investigates whether repression encourages or deters dissent. The current literature lacks one single, coherent, theoretical, and empirically corroborated model of the interactive relationship between dissent and repression. The Principal Investigator posits a theory that accounts for the escalatory and deterrent effects of repression on dissent and dissent on repression. The Principal Investigator argues that political survival motives drive state and dissident leaders to retain power and control over their respective supporters. This motive leads them to examine one another's actions, their own previous actions, and the outcome of previous interactions, estimate the costs of those interactions, and react in ways that ensure their tenure. Assuming that leaders choose from a strategy set that contains both cooperative and hostile means, the Principal Investigator proposes the conditions under which state and dissident leaders choose to act violently and to act cooperatively. Controlling for the state of the domestic economy, international economic forces, third party intervention, and the effects of regime change, the Principal Investigator specifies a system of equations that models state and dissident leaders' choices in response to one another, while engaged in a sequential series of interactions. Using event data and time series econometric techniques, empirical tests of the theoretical model are performed in the countries of Chile, Brazil, Mexico, Nigeria, Afghanistan, and South Korea. The design allows for both within-region comparison and across region comparisons.