Project News Archives - Nonviolent Repression

New research forthcoming in the Oxford Research Encyclopaedia of Politics

Katerina Tertytchnaya — Thu, 19 Oct 2023 19:48:20 +0000

In the article, we examine authorities’ use of the law to diminish their opponents’ ability and willingness to challenge the state, a process known as ‘legal repression’. Legal repression offers several advantages to autocrats seeking to weaken dissent, when compared to the use of coercion. Domestically, legal repression maintains the appearance of legality, bolsters the legitimacy of the regime, and avoids the backlash mobilization that can follow instances of the overt use of force. Brutal repression may lead to criticism both at home and from the international community and international human rights organizations, jeopardizing the state’s reputation abroad. In some cases, the use of force may lead to sanctions against the state, or risk the loss of membership to international organizations. Legal repression is often a gradual process which garners less international attention and attracts less criticism.

Given these advantages, legal repression has been widely used in contemporary authoritarian regimes and non-democracies, and has been studied in states such as Turkey, India, Bahrain, and Singapore. Existing research has investigated the ways in which laws are used for repressive ends in such regimes, and advanced our understanding of the conditions that make legal repression more likely in these settings. To a lesser extent, scholars have also explored the consequences of legal repression, focusing on its impact on protest, activists, and civil society.

In our article we discuss how, in Vladimir Putin’s Russia, the law has been used to exercise political power vis-à-vis the opposition, resulting in ‘rule by law’ as opposed to the ‘rule of law’. Since the early 2000s, the Russian authorities have used legislative channels to adopt and refine laws aimed at hindering protest and inhibiting the development of an independent civil society. The discussion of the Russian case contributes to comparative research on legal repression and authoritarian politics. First, it offers important insights into the direct and indirect consequences of legal repression on dissent, civil society, and public opinion. For example, the use of a legal mechanism to label certain organizations as ‘Foreign Agents’ in Russia has created significant administrative and financial obstacles for those organizations, but has also stigmatized their work by indicating that they operate in the interests of foreign powers.

Second, the study of Russia illustrates how institutional capture facilitates the adoption of repressive laws. As the evidence suggests, there has been little opposition to the adoption of repressive legislation in Russia, thanks to the ruling party’s dominance of the national and regional parliaments, the co-optation of parliamentary opposition, and, to some extent, Putin’s own soaring popularity. The consolidation of political power in the Kremlin also incentivized subnational authorities to oversee the implementation of restrictive legislation in their localities.

Finally, the Russian case advances our understanding of the dynamic nature of legal repression, showcasing how domestic and external events may drive variation in its intensity. Thus, for example, repressive laws in Russia were introduced in response to events such as the Colour Revolutions; the 2011-12 protests ‘For Fair Elections’; and most recently, following the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The article concludes by identifying fruitful avenues for future work on legal repression in Russia and beyond.

Tertytchnaya, Katerina; Tiratsoo, Madeleine. (2023). Legal Repression in Russia. In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics. Oxford University Press.

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Authorization of Russian protests in the early 2010s

Katerina Tertytchnaya — Wed, 17 Aug 2022 16:26:46 +0000

By Lia Sokol

The early 2010s brought the biggest wave of protests to Russia since the 1990s. Perhaps the most well-known protests occurred in 2011-12, spurred by claims that the 2011 Duma election had been flawed. Beyond these events, other waves of activism and isolated protests took place across the country.

News stories from Namarsh.ru offer rich insights into the spectrum of factors that prompted the public to take to the streets in the early 2010s. For example, protests in memory of Egor Sviridov, a football fan who was killed in a clash and whose killers were released, drew large crowds in the streets of Moscow in early 2011. Protests were also organized in response to the liquidation of flower kiosks, the dismissal of employees, and problems in the housing sector. These events, organized mainly by private citizens, suggest that issues that affect citizens directly and perceived injustices motivate protest participation – even in an authoritarian setting.

Though many protests, like those above, were not in opposition to the Putin regime, various groups organized protests that expressed more direct political opposition to the government. Several of them had failed to secure protest permits. Indeed, the majority of the groups organizing unauthorized protests in Russia in the early 2010s consisted of non-systemic opposition actors – political parties that were not formally represented in parliament – and local activist groups.

Most unauthorized protests in 2011 were organized by the Strategy-31 and ‘Day of Wrath’ movements, which advocated respectively for freedom of protest and a change in the country’s leadership. Protests by the two movements were designed to be recurring monthly events: Strategy-31 protests occurred on the last day of every month with 31 days, while the ‘Day of Wrath’ organizers recalibrated the action to occur on the 12^th of every month starting in 2011. This tactic of scheduling protests on specific dates can be seen across authoritarian regimes. Recurrent events facilitate protest coordination in an otherwise hostile environment. During the Arab Spring protests in the Middle East, for example, Fridays – a day of prayer – became a day of recurring mobilization.

When Russian officials refused to authorize a protest, they often provided specific reasons to justify the ban. Many of these had the appearance of legitimacy, with authorities citing other events occurring at the same time as the requested protest or raising concerns for overcrowding. However, a closer look at activist responses to these reasons reveals that they were generally artificial. For example, one protest permit was denied due to an event for government officials meant to take place at the same time; there was no record of such an event on any government website. Other protests were denied authorization because the square that had been requested was scheduled to be snow plowed at that specific time; in some cases, no other time for snow removal – or for the protest – was found acceptable.

Altogether, a study of the protest authorization process in Russia helps better understand the various strategies the country’s government uses to repress dissent. More broadly, this shows the means by which authoritarian governments use the law and administrative processes to limit and change the actions of opposition movements.

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The project welcomes two new members

Katerina Tertytchnaya — Thu, 16 Jun 2022 14:09:39 +0000

We are delighted to welcome two new members of our research team this term, Alex Tambiev and Lia Sokol.

Alex Tambiev, an undergraduate student in Politics and International Relations at the Department of Political Science, University College London joined the project in spring term 2022. Alex will be manually coding protest features in news stories and helping validate automated data collection. Alex’s research interests include authoritarian regimes, democratization, protests, and inter- and intra-state conflict. At UCL, he has successfully completed modules on Democracy and Authoritarianism and Protest and Revolution.

Lia Sokol is an undergraduate at Cornell University working towards her B.A. in Government with a focus on international relations. Lia will spend six weeks at UCL, funded by the Michael J. Harum Memorial Award for students of Slavic languages through Cornell’s Einaudi Center for International Studies. This summer, her focus will be on analyzing the coverage of domestic and foreign protests in Russian media to identify protest characteristics.

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Unauthorized Protest in State Media

Katerina Tertytchnaya — Mon, 24 Jan 2022 21:59:02 +0000

Between January-February 2021, demonstrations in support of Alexei Navalny, detained upon his return from Germany, were held across Russia. January 23 was the first day of nation-wide protests, with events held across 198 Russian towns. The events were not authorized by the authorities and were met with arrests. Another wave of nation-wide protest occurred on January 31 st . According to OVD-Info, 5,611 people were arrested on this day . On February 4, 2021, Leonid Volkov, Navalny’s chief of staff announced that protests would be suspended. Between January and February 2021, Channel 1, one of Russia’s leading state-controlled TV outlets, published 40 news articles on protest taking place in Russia. We review them below.

The pandemic was used to justify protest permit rejections

To justify the use of preventive and responsive repression, Channel 1 used a range of arguments. For example, on a couple of occasions, the pandemic was cited as the justification for denying permission to protest. Channel 1 also referenced protests that were denied permits due to the pandemic around the world. Not only, in anticipation of the protests, Channel 1 commonly broadcasted statements from public health officials imploring people to stay at home and reminding them of the risks of Covid-19 transmission during gathering. This narrative was also used to suggest that protestors were reckless and unconcerned with public safety. After the protest of January 23, Channel 1 reported data from apps which showed a certain number of Covid-19 positive people had been in the protest crowds.

Drawing parallels with protest permits, and protest abroad

On some occasions, Channel 1 also compared Russia’s protest notification system to that of Western countries, implicitly suggesting that Russia’s permit system is not repressive, and in fact is quite reasonable. Details were given of French, Swiss and of the UK permit systems. Comparisons with the West were commonly drawn. This was often done in order to paint Western countries as hypocrites: they accuse Russia of inappropriate policing but look at France’s treatment of the yellow vest protesters, Netherlands of anti-lockdown protests, and the US of Capitol rioters.

Prevent protest participation and discredit organizers

Channel 1 used several arguments frames. The most prominent and emotively framed theme used was around the promotion of unauthorized protest events to children and teenagers. This was grounds for the most strident criticism of protest organisers, linked to stories about social media, in particular which networks were removing posts at Roskomnadzor’s request and which were not. Protest organizers were also accused of receiving foreign funding. At times, Channel 1 also accused the West of financially backing the organizers of protest. A lot of outrage was generated over the US embassy posting times/locations of protests on its website (advising US nationals to avoid these routes). These talking points are often led by statements from officials, Maria Zakharova (Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokeswoman) in particular. At times it is heavily implied that various Western agencies are directly responsible for organising the protests. Linked to the above, some reports suggested that the protests were a colour revolution in preparation. The situation was also compared to Maidan in Ukraine and the 2020 protest cycle in Belarus.

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Authoritarian regimes are using the law to stifle dissent

andywar — Sat, 22 Jan 2022 22:02:35 +0000

The right to assembly is entrenched in national constitutions. According to the Comparative Constitutions Project, in 2013, 97% of constitutions around the world provided for freedom of assembly, up from 67% just 30 years prior. At the same time, however, the authorities in non-democratic regimes continue to enact and enforce legislation that allows them to restrict protest. Indeed, while the share of non-democracies engaging in mass killings against their citizens has declined over time, the share of non-democracies violating the right to freedom of assembly has increased.

62% of non-democracies imposed moderate or severe restrictions on freedom of assembly and association in 1992. 84% of them did so in 2016. Drawing on evidence from countries in the post-Soviet region, Latin America, Africa, South-East Asia and Europe, we reviewed how governments in non-democracies commonly use the law to stifle dissent.

Regulating which groups can legally protest

Despite the right to freedom of assembly being a universal one, countries increasingly seek to prevent groups from taking to the streets. In several contexts, for example, only formally registered organisations can legally organise protest. By preventing civil society groups from registering as non-governmental organisations, the authorities in places like Turkmenistan and Chad criminalize these groups’ political participation and justify their leaders’ arrests. Indeed, it is estimated that in 2014, human-rights defending organisations faced restrictions signing up as organisations in a staggering 41% percent of all countries in the world. Using parliament-approved legislation, the authorities also seek to criminalize the activities of groups and organizations receiving foreign funding. Nicaragua’s 2020 law for the Regulation of Foreign Agents, for example, requires groups receiving funding from abroad to register as ‘foreign agents’ and stifles their political participation.

Regulating where protest can take place

The law is also used to define ‘acceptable’ places for protest. Visible and easily accessible spaces, such as central city squares, are often set as ‘out-of-bounds’ for protest. Designated ‘hyde-parks’, in which protest is allowed, are usually set in the outskirts of cities, minimising protest visibility, increasing the costs of protest participation, and dampening activists’ ability to generate awareness of their demands. According to OVD-Info in the Russian cities of Nizhny Novgorod and Novosibirsk, ‘out-of-bounds’ areas make up a staggering 74% and 59% of the cities’ overall territory. Venezuela’s 2002 National Security Law states that protests cannot take place in designated ‘security zones’, areas that encompass state television and radio stations, public infrastructure plants, military installations, and administrative offices. Such areas make up nearly 33% of national territory. What is more, the definition of ‘acceptable’ places for protest in the law is often vague, subject to arbitrary interpretation. For example, since 2008 in Kyrgyzstan demonstrations have been prohibited near “government entities”, a designation that includes everything from the Parliament building to schools and gas pipelines.

Protest notifications used as protest authorisations.

Across the world, protest organizers are usually required to notify the authorities ahead of certain types of protest. This is done to ensure that appropriate arrangements are in place ahead of an event. In illiberal settings, however, the authorities use protest notifications strategically, as a tool of political control. Mayors and administrators – groups rarely associated with protest repression – turn the protest notification review process into a de facto protest permit procedure. Notifying the authorities of a protest is not enough – activists also need to secure the authorities’ approval. Protesting without a permit is illegal and carries sanctions for protest organizers and participants, ranging from fines to imprisonment. Russian legislation in 2012, for example, increased fines for participating in unauthorized demonstrations approximately 100-fold. Indeed, the authorities in contexts as diverse as Puerto Rico, Russia and Kenya, have been repeatedly shown to use permit requirements ‘in a manner designed to redirect, dissuade, or prohibit demonstrations’. Across the countries we reviewed, protest authorisation requirements were consistently used in a politically motivated manner. In Chad, for example, the authorities commonly ban demonstrations organized by groups critical of the government but permit those in support of the incumbent. In Turkey, governors are able to postpone assemblies for a period of one month, on the grounds of ‘safety, crime prevention, and public security’, provisions commonly used against opposition-led activities.

National security and defamation laws used against demonstrators

In several non-democratic regimes, legislation is also used to designate protest and activists as ‘threatening’ to national security. Turkey’s Anti-Terror Law, for example is disproportionally used to sanction the activities of Kurdish demonstrators. Anti-terrorism legislation is also used to target activists in El Salvador. The law on extremism in Kazakhstan prohibits “extremism” also during rallies and demonstrations, but the lack of definition as to what constitutes extremism allows the law to be selectively applied against the regime’s political opponents. In places like Thailand and Cambodia pro-democracy or environmental activists are targeted with royal insult or defamation laws. Strategies of ‘legal’ repression have several advantages for authoritarian incumbents. Most importantly, they are less likely to invite international and domestic outcry than strategies of repression that involve the use of coercion. Legal provisions setting the boundaries of ‘acceptable’ dissent could also allow the authorities to justify activists’ arrests, and dampen the reputational costs of brutal protest policing. Yet they can also backfire. People who see the law being used as an instrument of control may question its overall legitimacy. Growing restrictions on protest also create additional opportunities for disruption and may create a defiant, and even more resilient opposition. Altogether, the law remains at the heart of contemporary coercion. The legal strategies of repression we reviewed involve limited coercion, yet are used to achieve similar ends as violent repression. Better documenting the diverse range of nonviolent repressive strategies used around the world is critical for defending democracy worldwide. While the dangers of 21st century authoritarianism are manifold, its insidiousness is perhaps its most threatening characteristic.

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Our new website is now online!

andywar — Thu, 20 Jan 2022 22:43:34 +0000

We are delighted to launch the new website for our UKRI/ESRC-funded project: Nonviolent Repression in Electoral Autocracies. The project – which will run for three years – will allow us to investigate how contemporary electoral autocracies, regimes that combine authoritarian practices with multiparty elections, use legal strategies of repression, delegated to bureaucrats and courts, in order to restrict protest and hinder opposition and voter coordination.

The project builds on pilots funded by the British Academy-Leverhulme Small Research Grants, and the SHS Dean’s Strategic Fund.

In this website, you can find all the relevant information related to our project, as well as timely updates on our work: links to the data generated by the project, our recent publications and blog posts, as well as information about events related to the project. If you want to learn more about the project, or to know about the team behind the project, please head to the ‘About’ section, or drop us a line!

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