Disappearing dissent? Repression and state consolidation in Mexico

Abstract

Does violent repression strengthen the state? In this paper we explore the legacies of repression by the Mexican government on subsequent state consolidation. We investigate how a particular form of state repression, forced disappearances of alleged leftist dissidents, during the 1960s and 1970s in Mexico had path-dependent consequences for different dimensions of state capacity nearly fifty years later. To do so, we rely on data gathered from suppressed Mexican human rights reports of forced disappearances which, to our knowledge, have not been analyzed by social scientists before. Controlling for a rich set of pre-disappearances covariates, we find that forced disappearances are positively correlated with contemporary measures of fiscal and bureaucratic capacity. However, historical forced disappearances do not help the state to provide security, to consolidate its monopoly over the use of force, or to provide welfare-related public goods in the long run. Moreover, disappearances are negatively correlated with various measures of trust in the government.

Angry or Weary? How Violence Impacts Attitudes toward Peace among Darfurian Refugees

“…Individuals from victimized communities may experience emotions of fear, hatred, and resentment, driving them to take up arms or to otherwise support further violence against their perpetrators (e.g., Petersen 2002). These emotional reactions may be transmittable across generations (see, e.g., Balcells 2012; Rozenas, Schutte, and Zhukov 2017; Zhukov and Talibova 2018; Osorio, Schubiger, and Weintraub 2018). A psychiatric literature considers the consequences of violence through post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and depression (Pham, Weinstein, and Longman 2004; Vinck et al 2007; Pham, Vinck, and Stover 2009), suggesting that PTSD is associated with less openness to reconciliation and greater desire for vengeance (Bayer, Klasen, and Adam 2007), or with identifying violence as a means to achieve peace (Vinck et al 2007).…”

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“…Thus, while it is clear that colonial legacies are important to the functioning of policing institutions, it is important to ask for whom these institutions are functioning. Findings from other contexts also suggest that the legacies of state violence may be heterogeneous across different facets of governance (Osorio, Schubiger & Weintraub, 2018), underscoring the need to unpack how different types of violence can impact (or not) a variety of institutional and social processes beyond policing.…”

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