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Why does government violence deter political challengers in one context but inflame them in the next? This paper argues that repression increases opposition activity at low and moderate levels but decreases it in the extreme. There is a threshold level of violence, where the opposition becomes unable to recruit new members, and the rebellion unravels—even if the government kills more innocents. We find empirical support for this proposition in disaggregated data from Chechnya and a meta-analysis of sub-national conflict dynamics in 71 countries. The data suggest that a threshold exists, but the level of violence needed to reach it varies. Many governments, thankfully, are unable or unwilling to go that far. We explore conditions under which this threshold may be higher or lower and highlight a fundamental trade-off between reducing government violence and preserving civil liberties.JEL ClassificationD74, F51, H56.

Within a single conflict, the scale of government violence against civilians can vary greatly—from mass atrocities in one village to eerie restraint in the next. This article argues that the scale of anticivilian violence depends on a combatant's relative dependence on local and external sources of support. External resources make combatants less dependent on the local population, yet create perverse incentives for how the population is to be treated. Efforts by the opposition to interdict the government's external resources can reverse this effect, making the government more dependent on the local population. The article tests this relationship with disaggregated archival data on German-occupied Belarus during World War II. It finds that Soviet partisan attacks against German personnel provoked reprisals against civilians but that attacks against railroads had the opposite effect. Where partisans focused on disrupting German supply lines rather than killing Germans, occupying forces conducted fewer reprisals, burned fewer houses, and killed fewer people.

If a government is facing an armed uprising, why doesn't it confiscate all privately owned weapons? When and where is forcible disarmament most likely to occur? Can forcible disarmament reduce rebel activity? To establish a monopoly on the use of force, a government must either convince its citizens not to rebel, or remove their capacity to do so. Existing literature has left this choice – between punishment and disarmament – virtually unexplained. Most existing research focuses on disarmament in the context of post-conflict stabilization, rather than forcible disarmament during war. I introduce a mathematical model of irregular warfare, in which government and rebel forces seek a monopoly on violence. The model shows that disarmament occurs mainly in 'hard cases', where otherwise strong governments are unable to punish opponents or reward supporters. I test these claims with declassified archival data on counterinsurgency in the Soviet North Caucasus. The data confirm that disarmament was most likely where the government's coercive leverage was limited – due to poor intelligence and potential backlash from collateral damage. In these otherwise challenging circumstances, disarmament significantly reduced rebel violence – short-term and long-term, locally and region-wide. By limiting the potential coercive resources under the opposition's control, disarmament can render rebels unable to sustain a campaign of violence against the state.

Why do combatants intentionally uproot civilians? The forcible relocation of families and communities to concentration camps, "protected villages," and other special settlements is a regular feature of irregular war, occurring in almost a third of all counterinsurgency campaigns since 1816. Despite the historical regularity of these practices, most research has focused on individual decisions to flee, rather than the brute-force resettlement of civilians by combatants. Using a dynamic model of popular support and new micro-level data from Soviet secret police archives, I show that civilian resettlement is not simply a by-product of war but is a rational response to informational asymmetry. Combatants who cannot identify and selectively punish their opponents face incentives to control the population rather than earn its support. For strong governments with limited coercive leverage, civilian resettlement offers a way to reduce rebel activity without having to win hearts and minds.

How do civilians respond to violence in civil war, and how do these responses shape combatants' coercive strategies? Conventional wisdom expects civilian victimization to backfire, as a security-minded public "balances" against the side posing the greatest threat to its livelihood and survival. Yet combatants often expect a terrorized population to do the opposite, "bandwagoning" with those most willing and capable to inflict harm. Using an epidemic model of popular support dynamics, I explore the logic of balancing and bandwagoning in irregular civil war. I argue that when civilian strategy is clearly communicated to combatants, civilians are always better off balancing, and combatants are better off avoiding punishment. When civilian choice is not observed, the balancing equilibrium breaks down and patterns of violence depend on the local balance of power. The model's results challenge the view that selective violence is most common in areas of incomplete control. Due to uncertainty over civilian behavior, violence in both divided and perfectly controlled areas can occur in equilibrium, inflicting great costs on civilians. I compare these predictions against the historical record of Soviet counterinsurgency in Western Ukraine, using new micro-level data from the declassified archives of the Soviet secret police.

AbstractDo individuals previously targeted by genocide become more supportive of other victimized groups? How are these political lessons internalized and passed down across generations? To answer these questions, the authors leverage original survey data collected among Holocaust survivors in the United States and their descendants, Jews with no immediate family connection to the Holocaust, and non-Jewish Americans. They find that historical victimization is associated with increased support for vulnerable out-groups, generating stable political attitudes that endure across generations. Holocaust survivors are most supportive of aiding refugees, followed by descendants, especially those who grew up discussing the Holocaust with their survivor relatives. An embedded experiment demonstrates the steadfastness of these attitudes: unlike non-Jews or Jews without survivor relatives, survivors' and descendants' views toward refugees do not change after reading an in-group versus out-group–protective interpretation of the "never again" imperative. Histories of victimization can play an ameliorative role in intergroup relations.

States use repression to enforce obedience, but repression—especially if it is violent, massive, and indiscriminate—often incites opposition. Why does repression have such disparate effects? We address this question by studying the political legacy of Stalin's coercive agricultural policy and collective punishment campaign in Ukraine, which led to the death by starvation of over three million people in 1932–34. Using rich micro-level data on eight decades of local political behavior, we find that communities exposed to Stalin's "terror by hunger" behaved more loyally toward Moscow when the regime could credibly threaten retribution in response to opposition. In times when this threat of retribution abated, the famine-ridden communities showed more opposition to Moscow, both short- and long-term. Thus, repression can both deter and inflame opposition, depending on the political opportunity structure in which post-repression behavior unfolds.