Episode 1.2: Forging democracy out of the trauma of repression, with Elizabeth Nugent

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In this episode, we talk with Dr. Elizabeth Nugent, an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Yale University, about her new book, After Repression: How Polarization Derails Democratic Transition (Princeton University Press). 

Nugent is interested in authoritarian regimes that have collapsed in the face of popular uprising -- and specifically with what comes next. The demise of a dictatorship does not necessarily mean the start of a democracy: one autocratic regime can fall only to be replaced by another dictatorship. It is in fact relatively rare that autocratic collapse results in the establishment of a stable democracy. 

In her new book, Nugent is interested in figuring out what makes the difference. When a dictatorship falls, why do we sometimes get democracy and sometimes more autocracy? She focuses specifically on the aftermath of the Arab Spring: the string of popular uprisings against authoritarian regimes in the Middle East and North Africa in the early 2010s. In particular, the book examines the toppling of the Mubarak regime in Egypt and the collapse of the Ben Ali regime in Tunisia. 

The Egypt-Tunisia comparison is a striking one. Before and during the Arab Spring, these two countries looked similar in many respects. Both were ruled by dictators who had been in power for decades; both regimes were unseated by weeks of sustained mass protest; and both were replaced at first by members of the democratic opposition. Moreover, the politics of both countries revolved around the divide between Islamism and secularism. 

After the Arab Spring, however, the political systems’ paths diverged dramatically. After a brief flirtation with democracy, Egypt quickly descended back into strongman rule while Tunisians set up a quite vibrant multiparty democracy that still survives today. 

So what was it that allowed Tunisian society -- but not Egyptian society -- to support democratic norms and institutions? Nugent argues that the answer lies in how the old regime in each country wielded repressive power and the mark that repression left on identities and organizations among the two countries’ democratic oppositions.

In this episode, we unpack Nugent’s argument about the legacies of repression and about the evidence that she brings to bear on that argument, including comparative-historical analysis, in-depth interviews with opposition members, and inventive lab experiments. We discuss elements of the research process including how she decided to bring social psychology into the study of democratization and how she engaged with her research participants about highly sensitive and traumatic experiences. We also talk about what historical analysis brings to her explanation: why understanding British and French colonialism can help make sense of regime change in the 2010s. And we touch on possible parallels between coercive institutions in autocracies and repressive state practices in democracies.

Work by Elizabeth Nugent

Fair, C. Christine, Rebecca Littman, and Elizabeth R. Nugent. 2018. “Conceptions of Shari’a and Support for Militancy and Democratic Values: Evidence from Pakistan.” Political Science Research and Methods, 6(3), pp. 429–448.

Nugent, Elizabeth R. 2020. After Repression: How Polarization Derails Democratic Transition. Princeton University Press.

Nugent, Elizabeth R. 2020. “The Psychology of Repression and Polarization.” World Politics, 72(2), pp. 291–334.

Works Discussed in the Episode

Bauer, Shane. 2019. American Prison: A Reporter's Undercover Journey into the Business of Punishment. Penguin Books.

Blaydes, Lisa. 2011. Elections and Distributive Politics in Mubarak’s Egypt. New York: Cambridge University Press.

——. 2018. State of Repression: Iraq under Saddam Hussein. Princeton University Press.

Blaydes, Lisa, and Rachel M. Gillum. 2013. “Religiosity-of-Interviewer Effects: Assessing the Impact of Veiled Enumerators on Survey Response in Egypt.” Politics and Religion, 6(3), pp. 459–482.

Brownlee, Jason. 2002. “The Decline of Pluralism in Mubarak’s Egypt.” Journal of Democracy, 13(4), pp. 6–14.

——. 2007. Authoritarianism in an Age of Democratization. New York: Cambridge University Press

Brownlee, Jason, Tarek E. Masoud, and Andrew Reynolds. 2015. The Arab Spring: Pathways of Repression and Reform. New York: Oxford University Press.

Davenport, Christian. 2015. How Social Movements Die: Repression and Demobilization of the Republic of New Africa. New York: Cambridge University Press.

——. 2007. “State Repression and Political Order.” Annual Review of Political Science, 10, pp. 1–23.

Geertz, Clifford. 1973. The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays. New York: Basic Books.

Greitens, Sheena Chestnut. 2016. Dictators and their Secret Police: Coercive Institutions and State Violence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Hartnett, Allison Spencer, Nicholas Lotito, and Elizabeth Nugent. 2018. "The Origins of Coercive Institutions in the Middle East: Preliminary Evidence from Egypt." Available at SSRN 3239093.

Kalyvas, Stathis N. 2000. “Commitment Problems in Emerging Democracies: The Case of Religious Parties.” Comparative Politics, pp. 379–398.

——. 2006. The Logic of Violence in Civil War. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006.

Lipset, Seymour M., and Stein Rokkan. 1967. “Cleavage Structures, Party Systems, and Voter Alignments: An Introduction.” In Party Systems and Voter Alignments: Cross-National Perspectives, eds.  Seymour M. Lipset and Stein Rokkan. Toronto: Free Press. pp. 1–64.

Lotito, Nicholas J. 2018. “Soldiers and Societies in Revolt: Military Doctrine in the Arab Spring.” PhD dissertation, Department of Political Sciences, Columbia University, New-York, NY.

Lutterbeck, Derek. 2011. Arab Uprisings and Armed Forces: Between Openness and Resistance. London, UK: Ubiquity Press.

——. 2013. The Paradox of Gendarmeries: Between Expansion, Demilitarization and Dissolution. London, UK: Ubiquity Press.

Mosley, Layna. 2013. “Just Talk to People? Interviews in Contemporary Political Science.” In Interview Research in Political Science, edited by Layna Mosley. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, pp. 1-28.

Walsh, Declan. 2020. “In Egypt, Images From American Protests Evoke a Lost Revolution.” The New York Times. The New York Times, June 2, 2020. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/02/world/middleeast/protests-egypt-floyd-arab-spring.htm,