Last week on Deep Dive, we looked at some of the unintended consequences for domestic protest movements of being observed by international actors. This week, we’ll look at new research on what happens when domestic protesters very much intend to be observed by the outside world.

The whole concept of a political prisoner is, in some basic sense, internationalized. If you are being held in custody by a government because that government perceives you as a political threat, then it is near impossible to appeal to that government’s sense of legal responsibility to gain your freedom. Jailing political prisoners rarely seems absurd to the government doing the jailing. To international audiences, however, the logics of power preservation behind jailing political opponents are often painfully obvious. For that reason, many political prisoners make direct appeals to international audiences in hopes of aid in securing their release.

In a recent article in International Studies Quarterly, political scientist Jamie Gruffydd-Jones takes up the question of what happens once those appeals go out into the world. Gruffydd-Jones studies China, and the focus of his article is on political prisoners there. Chinese dissidents like Wei Jingsheng and Liu Xiaobo have gained international fame and recognition for both their activism and their roles as the faces of China’s carceral approach to deterring dissent. Yet, as Gruffydd-Jones notes, despite both being international causes celebres, Wei and Liu’s stories ended very differently. Wei was released as part of China’s effort to win the competition to host the 2000 Olympics, and credited international pressure for helping achieve his freedom. Liu, conversely, died incarcerated despite winning a Nobel Peace Prize.

Gruffydd-Jones takes a data-driven approach to understanding why some international awareness efforts produce results like the campaign for Wei, and why some end in failure. Drawing from a database of Chinese political prisoners who between 1994 and 2017 who have sought local, national, or international attention for their cases, he coded whether each case was highlighted by international human rights groups, major international media outlets, or the US State Department. He then compared the level of international attention each case received to its outcome – namely, were the prisoners released before completing their sentences.

The answer is that international attention does help free Chinese political prisoners, but only if it comes early in the process. Early international publicity made it 70% more likely that a prisoner would be released before they had been sentenced. Once a Chinese court passed down a sentence, however, the effect of international publicity disappeared. If anything, attention from abroad after a prisoner had been sentenced actually reduced their chances for early release.

International pressure has also become less effective over time in China. The effect of all forms of international pressure was higher between 1994 and 2007 than between 2008 and 2014, but the change in the effect of State Department involvement is particularly striking. Up until 2007, being mentioned by the State Department made it slightly more likely that a Chinese political prisoner would receive early release. Since 2008, the impact of a State Department mention is unambiguously negative. As China has grown economically stronger, it appears, its resistance to pressure on human rights issues – especially from the US – has increased.

Gruffydd-Jones’ study is, ultimately, good news for human rights activists. It offers strong evidence that even the most powerful human rights abusers can be pressured to do the right thing in the correct circumstances. Naysayers who suggest that any outside pressure will result in the Chinese government merely doubling down on repression to save face appear, at least in pre-sentencing cases, to be wrong. The fact that such a shift occurs at sentencing suggests that the limits to international pressure have more to do with domestic political structures than with the strategies used by outside advocates.

Shirin Jaafari spoke with Afghan women who have taken to the streets to protest Taliban restrictions on their daily lives. Women like Wahida Amiri have been holding marches, both in Kabul and around the country, for months to advocate for teenage girls to be allowed to attend school and for women to be able to hold jobs under Taliban rule. The protests are dangerous – marchers have been assaulted, and one protester was shot to death in November. Yet the marches continue, and have now expanded to include protests against the humanitarian crisis that is engulfing Afghanistan following the US decision to bar the Taliban-led government from accessing the government’s own central bank reserves.

Sweta Tiwari and Shrinidhi Ambinakudige marked Martin Luther King Jr. Day by publishing their study of how US society has treated streets named for the great civil rights leader. There are 955 MLK streets in the US, nearly all in neighborhoods where mostly Black Americans live. MLK streets often serve as main streets of neighborhoods which have racial makeups determined by the same kinds of segregation policies King spent his life fighting against. The effects of those policies remain with us today, with areas around MLK streets often lacking outside investment and access to government services compared to white neighborhoods of equivalent size. Yet MLK streets are also hubs of entrepreneurship, with MLK streets producing similar levels of jobs and revenue as other traditional commercial street names, like Main Street.

Anita Elash tracked the true effect of COVID-19 on non-emergency medical procedures in Canada. As the prevalence of the virus has spiked in recent weeks due to the omicron variant, the Canadian government has indefinitely postponed “elective” procedures to make sure there are hospital beds open for COVID-19 patients. That means that crucial procedures – like removing tumors or conducting angiograms – will go undone, endangering the safety of patients. The government is working to expand capacity by hiring up to 1,000 foreign-trained nurses, but critics are livid that, two years into the pandemic, the government has still not adequately invested in care for both COVID-19 patients and the rest of the general public.

A million dollars while supporting Ugandan government internment policies and dismissing 3,000 starving Congolese families as “nothing” isn’t cool. You know what’s cool? A Nobel Prize while supporting Ugandan government internment policies and dismissing 3,000 starving Congolese families.

The existence of a puppy forever war in the children’s television landscape was always going to lead to this.

It’s the only way to describe just how cold and icy it gets on Jan. 6.

The political situation in London remains extremely entertaining.

Your grandpa, hearing you’re going to get a degree in political science: “Oh, so you’re gonna learn how to be a politician!”
You, using your degree in political science: This.