Studies of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute; Cambridge Studies in Contentious Politics. Cambridge, UK; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016. xix, 324 pp. (Illustrations, maps.) US$99.99, cloth. ISBN 978-1-107-13984-8.
In this voluminous study the author tries to develop a general theory to explain the institutionalized coercive use of force in dictatorships across cultures and over extended time periods. The key point of interest that informs this study is the relationship between coercive institutional mechanisms and levels of repression and state violence. To put it differently, the author wants to shed light on the institutional dynamics that shape the use of violence and the consequences citizens experience as a result of these policies. Theoretically, the author draws from institutional and threat perception models to embed her argument. She discards other models such as “path dependence” and “external influence” because, according to her, these theories cannot account for institutional variations in state violence (295).
Drawing on numerous examples from dictatorships around the world, with a special focus on the three case studies of Taiwan, the Philippines, and South Korea, the author posits that dictatorships face a “coercive dilemma” (12). Based on the threats dictators face when gaining power, they have two strategic choices: either build up a unitary and inclusive secret police force to monitor, prevent, or repress mass protest, or build up a more aggressive but disparate and segmented secret repressive apparatus to foil possible coups by rival internal elites. The author contends that dictators can only focus their energies on one of those two threats (4). In contrast to conventional studies that predict the massive use of violence to deter and contain possible mass protests, the author asserts that the existence of a fragmented and exclusive security apparatus is more likely to spread and sustain state violence than the existence of a unitary secret force organization for two reasons: namely, the organizational inability to gather intelligence information in an effective way and the higher occurence of incentives for state violence because the fragmented security agencies operate in parallel and compete with each other in persecuting opponents triggered by internal competition along divisive security lines (12). In the empirical part of her analysis, the author explores the different ways that dictators have organized their coercive apparatuses, using the examples of Taiwan under Chiang Kai-shek and Chiang Ching-kuo, the Philippines under Ferdinand Marcos, and South Korea under Park Chung-hee and Chun Doo-hwan. She demonstrates that institutional choices unequivocally shape the violence used against citizens. This phenomenon explains, for instance, why violence in Taiwan dropped over the course of the 1950s, but rose steadily in the Philippines under Marcos. By contrast, South Korea experienced two opposite patterns of state violence under Park and Chun: whereas Park relied on a more exclusive and fragmented security apparatus, Chun unified the apparatus, which resulted in lower levels of violence.
The author extends her findings to other regions of the world by exploring the situation in Chile under Pinochet and the situation of East Germany. It is difficult, however, to imagine how these two examples could possibly reinforce the argument put forward in the book. In Chile, for example, the author argues that a drop in violence can be explained by a reorganization of the security apparatus. A graph on page 272 showing the number of killed and arrested regime opponents underlines this drop. However, one could conversely argue that the drop in violence is related to the simple fact that after the first four initial months of the junta, when thousands of civilians had been murdered, jailed, killed, or had disappeared, there was no more opposition left as most opponents had been physically eliminated or removed from the streets. The case of East Germany is not convincing either. The author mentions correctly that the security apparatus did not respond with increased violence to popular unrest towards the end of the regime in 1989 (282). However, her theory cannot explain why the SED regime collapsed overnight. Indeed, evidence suggests that dictatorships crumble when support for the dictator falls apart and when the majority of citizens regard the regime as illegitimate. This is exactly what happened in East Germany when citizens lost their fear of the security apparatus and repression was no longer effective. The regime collapsed not because the Stasi was unitary and inclusive with a huge network of unofficial willing civilian informants, as the author suggests, but because it had become illegitimate and dysfunctional in the eyes of the citizens. There are several other cases which do not conform with the theoretical assumptions expressed in the study. Take, for example, North Korea: in the most enduring dictatorship in Asia, extreme state violence has been prominently used to purge internal high-ranking elites. Most of the 340 individuals executed since 2011 by the new ruler Kim Il Jong have been members of the inner power circle whilst executions of ordinary citizens have been the exception. Is there any reason to believe that the security apparatus is unitary and inclusive? If yes, how can this explain the high level of mistrust and violence against members of the inner circles? North Korea seems to put into disarray Greiten’s assumed link between institutional dynamics and the use of state violence against opponents. Another example which cannot be explained by Greiten’s framework is the repressive crackdown in Bahrain in 2011, which was underwritten by external actors. Finally, if we look at the situation in Syria, it becomes obvious that Assad’s repressive system has not only been extremely violent (two-thirds of all war crimes have reportedly been carried out by his troops) but also maintained unity, consistency, and pervasiveness among the security services since Assad’s election in the presidential referendum in 2000.
In addition, the study fails to account for and predict change: What makes seemingly stable dictatorships fail and what triggers their downfall? It is difficult to conceive how Greiten’s model can, for example, be applied to the 2011 revolution in Tunisia, when the army refused to shoot on protesters and President Ben Ali, whose security apparatus was deemed one of the strongest and most oppressive in the region, had to flee the country overnight.
In sum, if a theory cannot explain why levels of state violence vary or why state violence has become ineffective at a certain point in time, then it is an inadequate or incomplete theory. In the conclusion, the author herself reflects this lack of belief when she notes that “the answer lies at least partly in the coercive institutions” [italics added] (296). To put it differently, other non-institutional factors such as lack of public support and legitimacy, psychological concerns, or external factors should be taken into account when exploring why dictators use force, stop using force, and why they might fail at the end despite the use of force.
Patrick Hein
Ochanomizu National Women’s University, Tokyo, Japan
pp. 123-125