Dictators and their secret police: coercive institutions and state violence, by Sheena Chestnut Greitens

Co-ethnic bias and policing in an electoral authoritarian regime: Experimental evidence from Uganda

“…For political leaders who are trying to remain in power (often against popular will), the police are an important institution by which they can monitor, control, and repress political opposition . To ensure that the policeand other parts of the security apparatus -serve as a reliable pillar of their rule, leaders in multi-ethnic states frequently overstaff these institutions with loyalists from their (or allied) ethnic groups (Quinlivan, 1999;Roessler, 2011;Greitens, 2016). When demographic limitations make stacking difficult, leaders can resort to shuffling around officers so that dissident areas are policed by loyalists, particularly during politically sensitive moments (Hassan, 2017).…”

“…I argue that how individuals from marginalized communities view the criminal justice system and the state more broadly shapes their preference for interacting with a co-ethnic police officer. When political leaders use the police for political purposes in multi-ethnic states, they likely stack the police force with their co-ethnic loyalists or shuffle officers so that the most loyal officers patrol areas with the most political opposition (Quinlivan, 1999;Roessler, 2011;Greitens, 2016;Hassan, 2017;Blaydes, 2018). In either case, the result is that some areas are characterized by police operating in non-co-ethnic communities playing a dual role: providing law and order and repressing political dissent Curtice & Behlendorf, 2021).…”

Swords into ploughshares? Why human rights abuses persist after resistance campaigns

“…More extreme levels of violence like genocide may inculcate more extreme learning effects. Second, regime leaders often rely on diverse sets of security institutions in addition to military and police forces (Greitens, 2016;Carey & Mitchell, 2017;De Bruin, 2021). Exposure to counterinsurgency may be more consequential for some of these institutions than others.…”

“…The challengers who launch these campaigns are all domestic actors, meaning that cases of interstate conflict are excluded.3 Scholars have recently begun to explore the ways in which foreign support benefits (and potentially undermines) nonviolent movements(Chenoweth & Stephan, 2021).4 Per the authoritarian dilemma logic(Svolik, 2012;Greitens, 2016), the smaller the pool of specialists, the less danger they pose to the regime itself.142journal of PEACE RESEARCH 60(1)…”

Institutional Change as a Response to Unrealized Threats: An Empirical Analysis

“…Just as the prospective leaders of a coup have choiceslaunch the coup, support the mass uprising, or help the incumbent surviveso too does the incumbent. If the incumbent believes the threat of revolution or coup is sufficiently great to warrant a response, then she may try to coup-proof the country by reorganizing the military to include parallel security forces (Greitens, 2016;Quinlivan, 1999), expand the provision of private benefits to a select group of coalition members, possibly purging some to generate freed-up money to pay the cost, or expand the provision of public goods to dampen the incentive for an uprising among the masses. An expansion of the coalition is a leader's response to threats from the masses, while purges and contractions in coalition size are the preferred response to threats of coup and other forms of coalition disloyalty.…”