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Justifying Repression in Authoritarian Regimes of the Arab World: Official Framing and Target Audiences

Applicant Dr. Maria Josua
Subject Area Political Science
Term from 2018 to 2025
Project identifier Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 415741057
 
Final Report Year 2025

Final Report Abstract

State officials in authoritarian regimes often attempt to hide or justify the repression they use to maintain power. While autocracy research usually analyses repression and legitimation as separate strategies, this project has conceptualized the crucial interconnection of how repression is justified, offering a differentiated perspective on the effects of repression on authoritarian persistence. The project developed a novel framework to comprehensively investigate the communication and justification of repression. It shed light firstly on how repression is justified under everyday authoritarianism, and secondly on the choice and reception of justifications in the repression of Arab uprising protests. The project was the first to systematically investigate justifications of repression in autocracies. The “Justifications of Repressive Incidents in Morocco and Tunisia” dataset compiled all repressive incidents reported by human rights organisations in the decade before the Arab uprisings. The event dataset published with GESIS is innovative in its disaggregation of multiple dimensions of repression. The analysis of the data revealed the importance of judicial repression in the two states’ legitimation of repression. The project further highlighted antiterrorism legislation as a legal justification for repression that was used in courts. Focusing on the Arab uprisings in Tunisia and Morocco in 2011, the project investigated communication about protest repression as well as the responses by activists and other domestic and international audiences. While both states employed some similar justifications, the overall communication about protest repression diverged, as did its reception by citizens and international actors. Attempts to justify repression in Tunisia failed and led to higher mobilization. In Morocco the division of labour between monarchical reform promises and ministerial defamation demobilized the middle classes, while the newly mobilized marginalized parts of the protest movement were repressed. The methods used included content and frame analysis of documents, speeches and laws, descriptive statistics, and field research with qualitative semi-structured interviews. The project results have been published in four peer-reviewed articles in renowned international outlets such as Contemporary Politics, Journal of Global Security Studies, and the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics, above the envisaged number, likewise the policy briefs. A contribution in Mediterranean Politics has attracted over 20,000 views and is the journal’s most read article. The project contributed to research on MENA politics, provided novel insights into political communication in autocracies, and advanced scholarship on repression. The findings have also informed discussions with policymakers and the broader public, numerous media contributions, podcasts, and panel discussions.

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