Autocracy's long reach: explaining host country influences on transnational repression

Abstract

Authoritarian regimes frequently reach across borders to repress against exiled dissidents. Existing scholarship has investigated the methods and effects of transnational repression. Yet, we lack knowledge of the role that the political context of a host country and its relations to the origin country of diasporas play in incidents of transnational repression. Addressing this gap, we use a Freedom House dataset on physical acts of transnational repression (2014–2020) to study how the regime type of the host country and the regional ties between the host and origin country influence the likelihood and type of transnational repression incidents. Conducting a logistic regression analysis with yearly directed dyads, we find that to target exiles in autocratic host states perpetrators primarily rely on the cooperation of authorities, whereas in democratic host states they resort more often to direct attacks. We also show that authoritarian cooperation on transnational repression is regionally clustered: it often occurs when home and host state are situated within the same authoritarian neighbourhood, and partly also when they are members in the same regional organization. Our article reveals some of the host state conditions and relational dynamics that shape the decisions and strategies of transnational repression perpetrators.