Demonstrators and Dictators: Sharing Strategies on Repression and Reform [From the Director]

Democracy and Society Vol. 7 Iss. 2 Spring 2010
Barak Hoffman

Those seeking to promote and block political reform exist in a dynamic environment. They must consider new techniques, technologies, and strategies as they become available and respond to the actions of their adversaries. Reformers and those seeking to maintain the status quo also can learn from allies in other countries as well as form organizations that allow them to share information across borders. To explore these processes of political learning, the Center for Democracy and Civil Society and Freedom House hosted a conference, “Demonstrators and Dictators: Sharing Strategies” on December 10, 2009. We have dedicated this issue of Democracy and Society to the conference papers.

The papers touched on two main themes. The first is how new technologies, such as Facebook, Twitter, and Ushahidi, affect the power dynamic between demonstrators and dictators. While many believe that these technologies inherently favor the former over the latter, the papers, especially those by Laura Mottaz and J. Hunter Price, question that assumption. Mottaz and Price show that while new technologies increase the capacity of demonstrators to organize and publicize, since governments control the communications infrastructure, demonstrators’ ability to exploit these platforms exists only to the extent that governments allow them to use the communication networks.

The second theme the papers raised was governmental learning across borders to counter the threats protestors pose. The papers highlighted three main strategies. The most common, as the papers by Jeanne Elone and Brandon Yoder, make clear is adopting laws to repress civil society. In the 1980s and 1990s, many countries transitioned to democracy, and enhancing freedom of political association was central in these political reforms. As civil society organizations have become more effective and begun linking with organizations in other countries to enhance their capacity, governments increasingly see these organizations as a threat. In response, Elone and Yoder notice a broad trend of governments imposing restrictions on these organizations, especially their capacity to seek external funding. The second strategy, most prominent in Sheena Chestnut’s paper on China, is governments learning the most effective way to silence protestors. Camera cell phones and internet web sites, such as You Tube, now permit near-instantaneous global transmission of pictures and video. As a result, governments are becoming more wary of repressing violently in public.  Instead, they are resorting to less visible forms of coercion. Chestnut explores the efforts of the Government of China in these tactics. The final strategy is cooperation on blocking political reform through international organizations, a theme most highly developed in Lauren Albright’s paper on the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). Often called the Dictator’s Club because non-democratic regimes comprise its entire membership, Albright examines how the SCO allows member states to share strategies on “best practices” for defusing internal demands for political reform.

Politics is dynamic contest. The main conclusion to emerge from the conference is that in the struggle between dictators and demonstrators, those who are best able to adapt to changing circumstances and opportunities tend to prevail.