Repression, Exit, and Dissent in an Autocracy

Max Deter, Kalle Kappner and Hans Lueders

No 13036, CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo

Abstract: Does repression silence dissent or push people to leave? We study the arrest of protesters during East Germany's Peaceful Revolution, using novel micro-data from Leipzig. Residents of streets and houses with an arrested protester were more likely to have left their address once the Berlin Wall fell, and exit visa applications rose in the months after an arrest. Nearby protest activity and support for the opposition show no visible decline after an arrest. Our results suggest that repression raised the demand for exit without a visible retreat of voice, and that residents acted on this demand once leaving became possible.

Keywords: protest; repression; emigration; exit visas; East Germany; autocratic breakdown (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H10 N44 P20 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.ifo.de/DocDL/cesifo1_wp13036.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ces:ceswps:_13036

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Klaus Wohlrabe ().