Repression and Revolutionary Action

Karl-Dieter Opp
Additional contact information
Karl-Dieter Opp: Universität Leipzig

Rationality and Society, 1994, vol. 6, issue 1, 101-138

Abstract: A theoretical model is proposed explaining why repression sometimes deters and sometimes instigates political action. Then this model is applied to explain the mounting protests in East Germany in 1989. The basic idea of the model is that repression, as a cost, has a direct deterring effect on political action, but that increasing repression instigates positive incentives up to a certain point; then positive incentives decrease—a relationship corresponding to an inverted u-curve. Apart from repression, public goods incentives (discontent, weighted by perceived political influence), moral incentives, and social incentives have positive effects on participation in protest. A representative survey of 1,300 citizens from Leipzig (East Germany) conducted in the fall of 1990, focusing on the events of the East German revolution in 1989, confirms the model with two exceptions: Increasing probability of repression raises protest, but the increase becomes smaller with increasing probability of repression (decreasing radicalization effect); increasing costs of repression lowers protest, but the decrease becomes smaller with increasing costs of repression (decreasing deterrence effect). It is argued that the protests in East Germany could emerge despite severe repression because positive incentives to protest increased due to political events.

Date: 1994
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1043463194006001007 (text/html)

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:sae:ratsoc:v:6:y:1994:i:1:p:101-138

DOI: 10.1177/1043463194006001007

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Rationality and Society
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().