Repression and bystander mobilization in Africa

ABSTRACT How does exposure to government repression shape bystander willingness to mobilize into a protest or demonstration? A robust body of scholarship has argued that repression can backfire, motivating activists to take to the streets after the government clamps down. Yet, while the evidence is strong that highly motivated and risk-acceptant citizens are willing to step up, less is known about how repression affects the majority of citizens who do not frequently participate in protests. Yet, theories of civil resistance often depend on mobilizing bystanders. I examine this by drawing on geocoded survey data as well as incident-level data of repression across Africa. I measure each respondent’s exposure to government repression across multiple spatial and temporal buffers. Contrary to expectations in the civil resistance literature, I find that exposure to repression correlates with a lower willingness to consider joining a protest or demonstration. The closer a respondent is, both temporally and spatially, to an incident of repression, the less likely they are to report that they would consider joining a protest. The results are robust to additional testing specifications that address issues of endogeneity, social desirability bias, and omitted variable bias.