The effects of repression on political violence: A literature review

A recurring fundamental dilemma in liberal democracies is how to deal with radical and extreme actors. The dilemma concerns how to maintain these actors’ rights to democratic freedoms, while at the same time limiting adverse effects on minorities, the public, and state security. In an attempt to safeguard the latter, various hard and soft repressive measures have been implemented by both state and non-state actors, including bans, arrestations, surveillance, and public exclusion and stigma. Yet, to date, we lack coherent knowledge on the actual effects of such repression tactics in liberal democracies, exacerbated by most of the repression literature being confined to the context of authoritarian regimes. In order to narrow this gap in knowledge, this paper systematically reviews existing research that may inform our understanding about the effects of repression on political violence and militant mobilization in the context of liberal democracies. By exploring the importance of different repressors (state and civil society), types of repression (legal, physical and discursive), and the targets of repression (non-violent and violent actors), the article aims to identify systematic indicators of repression that may be used in future research to map its varieties and extent at the cross-national level. In addition, it identifies a set of causal mechanism that may help explain why certain repressive measures appear to escalate militancy and violence in some cases and de-escalation in others.