Last week on Deep Dive, we looked at how leadership transitions within autocracies can shift the balance between managed hybrid autocracy and concentrated personalist rule. This week, we’ll talk about how the degree and style of repression by an autocrat can signal strength or weakness to internal security forces that may otherwise orchestrate a coup.

Autocrats often feel immovable until they aren’t. The forces that keep a single leader in play can, as we saw last week, be subject to a delicate balance of power by other elites. They can also, instead, be the result of a single leader using loyalists to successfully undermine and purge rivals. These strategies of court politics, which appear opaque to outsiders, shape the court of nations and governments. They can also influence the flow of information to a central autocrat, which must then act on internal information in the absence of external and public assessments.

In “Tenure through Tyranny? Repression, Dissent, and Leader Removal in Africa and Latin America, 1990–2006,” authors Christian Davenport, Babak Rezaee Daryakenari, Reed M Wood argue that “incumbents are vulnerable to coup d’ état when government repression is perceived as weaker than would normally be expected for a given challenge. By contrast, removal via revolution becomes increasingly likely when repression dramatically exceeds the levels that would normally be warranted given the extant challenge.”

In other words, when an autocrat is focused on staying in power, they have to calibrate repression in a way that mitigates both a risk of popular overthrow and prevents being ousted by the coordinated action of other elites, most especially those responsible for the military and other state security forces.

For their research, Davenport et. al. looked at 69 African and Latin American states between 1990 and 2006. (Notably, a group that excludes any nations with nuclear arsenals). In their work, the authors found that harsh repression of public protest is a tactic used by autocrats to keep the support of military leaders, noting instances when militaries have gone out of their way to crack down on protest beyond what political leaders ordered. Conversely, when the repression is heavier than anticipated, it can motivate stronger showings by protesting masses, who interpret the repression as a sign that the regime is insecure and desperate to hold on to power.

“We argue and demonstrate that overresponding to dissent is useful for preventing coups but can backfire and produce moral outrage that leads to revolution,” write Davenport et. al. “Consequently, leaders exist between a proverbial rock and a hard place: too much repression against dissent leads to ouster by the people; insufficient repression leads to removal by the military.”

One limitation noted by the authors is that their work is limited to an era of only minimal internet penetration, and largely predates modern social media. The way protests and information about them can spread through social media can spur greater mobilization, unless those narratives too can be countered by the state apparatus. Firewalling in a population can further tip the hands in favor of repression, as it not only limits the reach of protestors and media outside state control, it also leaves organizers used to online communication scrambling to adopt pre-internet tactics.

Kate Kizer implored Americans to look beyond the immediate military struggle in Ukraine, and toward one where the work of building democracy at home and abroad is undertaken seriously as a xxxxxx against future wars. Autocracy thrives not just on kleptocratic wealth, but also on imperialist dreams and xenophobic nationalism, used to build a broader base than just a narrow wealthy elite. “Let’s expand on current models of peacebuilding trust funds and create one for Ukrainian and Eastern European to not only support civil society capacity expansion, protection, and powerbuilding in the long-term, but also investing in addressing fragility and conflict before it turns into violence,” wrote Kizer.

Durrie Bouscaren reported on the Romanians taking in Ukrainian refugees. “One man from a nearby village, Ilut Gherghe, handed out warm hamburgers from a paper bag in his arms,” writes Bouscaren. Romania’s government has offered transport, schooling, and medical services, while the refugees are met by the new arrivals with food, toys, and support. The report, which is beautifully photographed, highlights the solidarity of the people with newly displaced friends, even as promised government aid isn’t always visible. Many refugees are passing through, en route to elsewhere in Europe, but for some invariably this will be where they wait out the war, and possibly longer.

Halima Gikandi observed the ongoing recovery in Ethiopia’s Amhara region. The war, which has stalled but not formally ended, disrupted the harvest season, leaving people dependent on aid shipments for grains that could not be farmed and gathered as normal. The trampled fields are but one scar in the area, as people learn to live with the aftermath of fighting visited upon them. Fighting wounded and killed civilians with stray bombs, and the possibility remains that armies will once again march forth into the region. Living in the wake of war is hard. Harder still, when it’s unclear that the war has fully passed.

When it comes to American foreign policy, there’s a time to reaper and a time to sow.

The interpretation of this pictogramic Russian anti-war poster that I can print is “нет войне,” or “no war.” The meaning I can’t is also a fun bit of wordplay.

Sometimes, it’s a terrible idea when the boys are back in town.

Other times, it’s an absolute banger.

Much as people decry war becoming like a video game, it still hasn’t come close to its full carcinization as a skinner box that eats currency and makes number go bigger.

Finally, if everything does go south in an atomic way during Women’s History Month, it’ll at least be the end of Herstory as we know it.