Political Control

Abstract

Political leaders use different tactics to ensure widespread compliance with state policies and to minimize resistance. Scholarship tends to treat different tactics individually, suggesting fundamental dissimilarities in underpinning logic and goals. We introduce political control as a concept that unifies these different tactics within a single framework and demonstrate the analytical utility of considering seemingly disparate strategies in conversation rather than in isolation. We synthesize a growing recent literature on political control, including innovative approaches to repression as well as studies of indoctrination, distribution, and infiltration. We argue that tactics of political control can be understood to vary along two primary dimensions: the level of violence and the materiality of rewards. We highlight recent inquiry into the downstream effects of political control. We conclude with a call for more research on political control that considers combinations of different tactics, across regime types, in a world where tolerance of violent repression is diminishing. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Political Science, Volume 25 is May 2022. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.

Messaging Apps: A Rising Tool for Informational Autocrats

“…The ways in which each of these dimensions are interconnected via social media use and exploitation is less studied. Some scholars have picked up the conversation of democratic backsliding as it pertains to social media (broadly defined), such as Hassan, Mattingly, and Nugent (2022) who argue that social media has become part of political control, for example: when it is a vessel for propaganda and indoctrination efforts (Huang 2015). On the one hand, social media might be used to propagate a positive image of the state's (alleged) competency in governing (Rozenas and Stukal 2019).…”

Political Control and Bureaucratic Resistance: The Case of Environmental Agencies in Brazil

“… 2 This definition draws on the more general concept of political control developed by Hassan et al 2022. …”

Exposure to state violence and substance use

“…A revolution is when "a state or political regime is overthrown and thereby transformed by a popular movement in an irregular, extra-constitutional, and/or violent fashion" and necessitates "the mobilization of large numbers of people against the existing state" (Goodwin, 2001: 11). 2 While states regularly employ actual or threatened violence to maintain control over populations (Hassan et al, 2022), revolution is an instance of contentious politics that prominently features defensive and often escalating state violence against mobilized civilians (Calvert, 1967;Davenport, 2007Davenport, , 2015Lichbach, 1987). In Egypt, 18 days of sustained mass mobilization forced President Hosni Mubarak to step down after nearly 30 years in office.…”

“…States regularly use violence to defend not only against external enemies but also internal challengers. The state will be violent towards its own citizens as it seeks to maintain order, control the population, and demobilize organized opposition (Hassan et al, 2022). Political science research on the effects of conflict finds a number of consequences from exposure to state violence that align with understandings of group threat drawn from behavioral psychology (Brewer and Brown, 1998), including both defensive in-group favoring behaviors (Berrebi and Klor, 2008;Canetti-Nisim et al, 2009;Elster, 2019;Feldman and Stenner, 1997;Getmansky and Zeitzoff, 2014;Hadzic et al, 2020;Hetherington and Weiler, 2009;Hoffman and Nugent, 2017) and positive pro-sociality (Bellows and Miguel, 2009;Balcells, 2012;Nugent, 2020;Punamaki et al, 1997;Voors et al, 2012).…”