How Repression Affects Public Perceptions of Police: Evidence from a Natural Experiment in Uganda

Published date01 November 2021
Date01 November 2021
DOI10.1177/00220027211013097
AuthorTravis Curtice
Subject MatterSpecial Feature Articles
2021, Vol. 65(10) 1680 –1708
How Repression Affects
Public Perceptions of
Police: Evidence from a
Natural Experiment
in Uganda
Travis Curtice
1
Abstract
What are the effects of state repression on public perceptions of police? And to
what extent are these effects uniform or conditional on individuals’ loyalty to
political authorities? I argue that repression by the police negatively affects how
people evaluate the police, especially among those who do not support the ruling
party. People who oppose the regime are more likely to fear the police following a
repressive event relative to regime supporters. To test this argument, I leverage a
unique research design opportunity that emerges from the social media tax protest
led by Robert Kyagulanyi Ssentamu (also known as Bobi Wine) and subsequent
selective repression by the Uganda Police Force while a nationally representative
survey on police and security was being administered in Uganda. I demonstrate
selective repression of protesters decreased support for the police. These effects
are largely driven by political loyalty; repression has a stronger effect on how
members of the opposition evaluate the police relative to incumbent supporters.
Keywords
Law and order, police, protests, collective action, repression, Uganda
1
Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, USA
Corresponding Author:
Travis Curtice, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH 03755, USA.
Email: travis.b.curtice@dartmouth.edu
Journal of Conflict Resolution
ªThe Author(s) 2021
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DOI: 10.1177/00220027211013097
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Special Feature Article
Curtice 1681
Introduction
What are the effects of state repression on public perceptions of the institution that
perpetrates it?
1
Does state repression by the police at the national-level affect
individual-level support for the police? Repression by the government occurs across
an array of contexts and political settings, making it one of the most common forms
of violence against civilians. Existing studies focus on the effects of repression on
political participation (Davenport et al. 2019; Ritter and Conrad 2016).
2
If state
repression decreases support for police, it has implications for the ability of police
to provide law and order and deter crime.
However, the political effects of rep ression are de bated. On one hand , state
repression is meant to punish political disloyalty, deter acts of dissent and induce
obedience (Lichbach 1987; Lyall 2009; Ritter and Conrad 2016; Young 2019;
Zhukov and Talibova 2018). On the other, state repression can incite political
opposition, mobilizing future collective action (Balcells 2012; Curtice and Beh-
lendorf 2021; Finkel 2015; Gurr 2015). The effectiveness of repression is shaped
by governments’ repressive tactics: targeting clandestine activities might decrease
dissent but using it against overt, collective challenges might escalate dissent
(Sullivan 2016). Additionally, repression and dissent depend on a state’s infra-
structural power. More developed infrastructural power might decrease reactive
repression by police enabling police to preemptively limit dissent without shifting
to excessive acts of state repression (Sullivan and Liu forthcoming). But we know
less about the relationship between repression and public perception of the insti-
tution tasked with perpetrating it.
In many unconsolidated democracies and autocracies, security institutions like
the police and military have two rol es: first, they are responsible for pro viding
security and law and order; and second, they repress dissent to maintain the political
status quo. Internal security institutions used by political authorities to repress dis-
sent and enforce the political status quo are also responsible for deterring crime,
enforcing law and order and providing security more broadly.
3
For many countries, the police forces a re the state agents most likely to use
repression against civilians (Curtice and Behlendorf 2021; Davenport 2020). Exam-
ining how repression affects people’s support for the police is crucial to understand-
ing the provision of law and order, especially when security institutions rely on
cooperation from individuals. When political authorities rely on the police to repress
dissent, it has implications beyond deterring dissent. As a tool used by political
authorities to inflict fear and reduce dissent (Young 2019), repression likely
increases people’s fear of the police. Relative to the military, police forces rely
more heavily on people’s willingness to cooperate with them to be effective. The
more people fear the police as repressive agents of the state, the less likely they are to
support them. People who fear repression, for example, are likely to avoid interact-
ing with security forces who employ it. Individuals refusing to voluntarily provide
information, or even report crimes, makes routine acts of policing more difficult.
2Journal of Conflict Resolution XX(X)

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