Captive Society: The Basij Militia and Social Control in Iran

By Saeid Golkar

Iran’s Basij Resistance Force is a paramilitary organization used by the regime to suppress dissidents, vote as a bloc, and indoctrinate Iranian citizens. Captive Society surveys the Basij’s history, structure, and sociology, as well as its influence on Iranian society, its economy, and its educational system. Saied Golkar’s account draws not only on published materialsincluding Basij and Revolutionary Guard publications, allied websites, and blogsbut also on his own informal communications with Basij members while studying and teaching in Iranian universities as recently as 2014. In addition, he incorporates findings from surveys and interviews he conducted while in Iran.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Release date: Feb 10, 2015
• ISBN: 9780231801355

Book preview

Captive Society

Captive Society

The Basij Militia and Social Control in Iran

Saeid Golkar

Woodrow Wilson Center Press

Washington, D.C.

Columbia University Press

New York

Woodrow Wilson Center Press

Washington, D.C.

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Columbia University Press

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Copyright © 2015 Saeid Golkar

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Cover photos: Members of the Basij militia’s Ashoura battalion stand in attention during a military parade, November 25, 2008 © Newscom; People in the Grand Bazaar, Tehran, Iran, February 21, 2013 © iStockphoto Design and layout: Station 10 Creative

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To my mother and father

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Contents

List of Figures and Table

Preface

Acknowledgments

Part I: The Civil Militia and State Control

1.    The Basij: Nongovernmental Organization, Administered Mass Organization, or Militia?

Part II: The Basij and the Shaping of an Insiders’ Network

2.    The History and Transformation of the Basij, 1980–2013

3.    Penetration into Society: The Organizational Structure of the Basij

4.    Mass Membership and Recruitment Training

5.    The Mass Indoctrination of Basij Members

Part III: The Basij and the Suppression of Others

6.    The Basij and Propaganda

7.    The Basij and Moral Control

8.    The Basij and Surveillance

9.    The Basij and Political Repression

Part IV: The Basij and the Controlling of Societal Sectors

10.  The Basij and the Controlling of Families

11.  The Basij and the Controlling of Schools

12.  The Basij and the Controlling of Universities

13.  The Basij and the Controlling of the Economy

Part V: The Sociology of the Basij—Motivations and Loyalty

14.  Basij Members—Islamic Warriors or Religious Thugs?

Conclusion: The Emergence of a Captive Society

Appendix: Excerpts from Official Basij Documents

Notes

Selected Bibliography

Index

Figures and Table

Figures

3.1. The Place of the Basij in Iran’s Political Hierarchy

3.2. The Internal Structure of a Basij Resistance Base

4.1. Structures of the Employees’ Basij Organization

4.2. Basij Membership Hierarchy

5.1. Organizational Structure of the Office of the Representative of the Supreme Leader within the Basij

11.1. Structure of the Teachers’ and Students’ Basij Organizations

12.1. Structure of the University Students’ and Professors’ Basij Organizations

13.1. The Basij’s Economic Branches

Table

13.1. Organizations Established by the Basij Cooperative Foundation and Their Subsidiaries

Preface

Basij is a Persian word meaning mobilization. The complete name of the group, Sazeman-e Basij-e Mostazafan, means Organization for the Mobilization of the Oppressed. Although the organization has millions of members (known as Basiji) and pervades all aspects of Iranian society, there are only a few scholarly works on the subject and even fewer available in English. With the expansion of the Basij across society and its increasing power inside the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI), it has become essential to study the Basij and its role in controlling Iranian society. This book attempts to address the lack of scholarly knowledge about the Basij and its role in maintaining state control over Iranian society, which have led to the persistence of the IRI in postrevolutionary Iran.

Methodology

Conducting research in this field is very difficult. There is no published scientific research focused on the sociology of the Basij or its functions. In addition, openly conducting a survey about the Basij is impossible owing to the sensitivity of the subject and the political situation in Iran. In writing this book, I used a variety of data from different sources, including publications in both Persian and English. These include the Basij Studies Quarterly, a Persian-language journal on issues relating to the Basij published by the Basij itself, as well as research conducted by the Basij Study and Research Center, the majority of which is carried out by Basij scholars and commanders. I have read a number of academic dissertations on the Basij as well as the main Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) publication, Sobh-e Sadegh. I have also used the publications of each Basij branch. For example, my analysis of the female Basij militia refers to publications of the Women’s Society Basij Organization (WSBO), such as Noght-e Oje (the WSBO quarterly) and Taninn-e Andishe (the WSBO monthly), as well as WSBO internal pamphlets (Khaber Nameh, which is published by the Deputy of Research and Study and analyzes the WSBO). I have also examined online sources, including websites and blogs written by Basij members. Other online sources include the websites and blogs of the various Basiji branches. All of these sources have made it possible to take a comprehensive look at the complex Basij institution.

Some of the results presented in this book are based on research I conducted a few years ago while studying and teaching at Iranian universities. While there, I was able to communicate with Basij members, both students and lecturers, and thus to study the Basij with more scrutiny. These personal, informal communications have also enabled me to better understand the Basij and learn about its training, inner structures, functions, and recent transformations.

In the years 2006–7, I conducted small surveys in Basij mosque resistance bases in southeastern Tehran and the student Basij resistance base at Islamic Azad University. Of the 126 questionnaires I distributed, 92 were returned. Because of the risk of conducting such studies, I focused the surveys only on basic questions about the socioeconomic backgrounds of the Basiji and their reasons for joining. I also conducted thirteen individual interviews with Basij members in different bases in the city of Tehran and two small cities, one in an eastern Tehran Province and another in the Central (Markazi) Province.

A portion of my research is rooted in observations that I made as an individual living with Basij members and as a scholar of politics in Iran. After the 1979 Revolution, some of my family members who had migrated to a conservative and lower-class neighborhood southeast of Tehran in the 1960s later joined the IRGC and the Basij. My observation of their personal activities gave me the ability to better understand the Basij and its inner functions. Wherever possible, I tested the reliability of my data using ancillary sources.

The Book’s Structure

This book is divided into five parts and contains fourteen chapters and a conclusion, which cover several important issues concerning the Basij organization. These issues include the history and transformation of the Basij, and its structure, membership, training, and functions.

Part I of the book contains chapter 1, which focuses on the nature of the Basij and its role in state control. Although there are at least four different views on the Basij’s nature, I suggest that the IRI has managed and deployed the Basij as a paramilitary force to enforce state control over society.

Part II focuses on the IRI’s efforts to shape an insider network using the Basij militia. This part is divided into four chapters. Chapter 2 focuses on the history of the Basij and its evolution over thirty years, from its inception in 1980 up to the present. In chapter 3, I describe how the Basij has penetrated Iranian society by illustrating the Basij’s position in the Iranian political environment and by explaining its vertical structure. Chapter 4 describes how the state uses the Basij as a mass membership organization to recruit people. I discuss the horizontal structure of the Organization for the Mobilization of the Oppressed, which includes more than twenty subset organizations. These branches are responsible for recruiting and organizing different social strata. Chapter 5 focuses on the Basij’s role in indoctrinating its members. I analyze the Basij’s ideological-political training to show how the Basij indoctrinates its members, guarantees their loyalty to the regime, and trains a cadre force for the IRI’s use. Through these mechanisms—recruiting, organizing, and indoctrinating—the Basij has shaped an insider network that is connected to the state and remains dependent on the survival of the IRI.

Part III of the book discusses the different mechanisms through which the IRI has used the Basij to control Iranian society and to maintain political order over the past two decades. This part consists of four chapters, which explain the most important Basij functions in postrevolutionary Iran: spreading the state’s ideology, moral policing, surveillance, and repression. For example, in chapter 6 I discuss the Basij as the state propaganda machine. Since its inception, the IRI has used the Basij as a pervasive media outlet for spreading its message. The Basij serves as a component of the state’s apparatus to promote Islamic ideology, justify clerical rule, undermine its rivals, and distribute the regime’s propaganda throughout society. Chapter 7 focuses on the Basij’s function as the Islamic state’s morality police force. I analyze the role of the Basij militia in asserting moral control over Iranian society, with a particular focus on the elevated stature that the Basij has gained since the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s. I examine how and why the Basij became involved in enforcing the principle of amr be maruf va nahy az monkar (commanding the right and forbidding the wrong), which is a critical component of the Iranian regime’s strategy to create a pious society and enforce moral behavior. Chapter 8 describes the Basij’s function as part of Iran’s intelligence apparatus. The IRI uses the Basij as a security backbone to further its aspiration to have 70 million informers, as one slogan phrases it. As the eyes and ears of the IRI, the Basij is responsible for monitoring citizens’ activities, gathering intelligence, and keeping files on political and social activists. In chapter 9, I explain the Basij’s security apparatus function and how the state has used the Basij to oppress Iranians through force. The Basij has established several security and military battalions used to control Iranian society and suppress opponents.

Part IV of the book focuses in detail on the Basij’s role in securitizing the Iranian economy, family, and education systems. Chapter 10, on the militarization of the family, contains a thorough study of the role that female Basiji play in maintaining social order in Iran. This chapter examines how and why the IRI uses female Basij members as agents of social control to guard Islamic values and manners within the Iranian family. In chapters 11 and 12, I focus on the paramilitarization of the Iranian educational system and the subsequent role of school and university students, teachers, and professors in the Basij organization. Chapter 11 focuses on the Basij’s efforts to influence elementary, middle, and high school students and teachers in order to create and train a new Islamic man. Furthermore, chapter 12 focuses on the organization’s attempt to Islamize the universities by way of students and professors. Chapter 13 explains how the Basij has increased its formal involvement in the Iranian economy since its inception. Though it was initially intended to be an organization that guaranteed the welfare of its personnel, the Basij has now extended its influence to every sector of the economy, from construction and real estate to the stock market.

Part V of the book focuses on the sociology of Basij members and their loyalty to the IRI. In chapter 14, I discuss the Basij members’ social classes, motivations for joining, and levels of commitment to the regime. This chapter discusses the ways in which Basij members consist of both religious people who believe in Islamic ideology and opportunistic thugs who use the Basij as a social mobility ladder.

In the book’s conclusion, I offer insights and observations concerning the effects of Iran’s ongoing securitization on the transformation of Iranian society into a captive society, where people live under pervasive state control, and the implications of this transformation for further political development. The expansion of the Basij has made Iranian society more polarized. At one pole, a small group of people have positive attitudes toward the IRI, join the Basij, and internalize their Basij mentality. At the other pole, a majority of people share a negative attitude toward the IRI and reject the Basij and its culture. The result has been a widening gap between the Basiji and the non-Basiji, which has led to the increasing alienation of Basij members from society.

Acknowledgments

I would like to acknowledge several people for their unwavering support and encouragement. Special thanks go to Larry Diamond, director of the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law at Stanford University. Larry was the first person to trust my work and open the door for me to US academia. I also owe a great debt to Hendrik Spruyt, former director of the Buffett Center for International and Comparative Studies at Northwestern University, who supported my research when I moved from Palo Alto to Chicago. Larry and Hendrik are not only among the most prominent scholars in political science but also the kindest human beings I have ever met. Without a doubt, this monograph would not have been possible without their consideration and encouragement.

I express my gratitude to Ahmad Ashraf, Shaul Bakhash, and Abbas Milani, who read the entire manuscript and spent hours discussing my arguments. Their consideration and precision were incredible. I am thankful to the Chicago Council on Global Affairs—especially Rachel Bronson, John DeBlasio, and William A. Obenshain—for their support of my research at the council. I am grateful to the Institute of International Education, especially Martha Bloem, Robert Quinn, and Clare Robinson for their support. Thanks are also due to Joseph F. Brinley, Haleh Esfandiari, Shannon Granville, Robert S. Litwak, Michelle Kamalich, Janet Spikes, and Michael Van Dusen at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, who provided invaluable and unceasing assistance. I am also grateful to Nicole Magney and Michael Brown for their editing and proofreading work on selected chapters.

Finally, and perhaps most important, a very special thank you goes to my family, my parents, and my wife, Tannaz, without whose support I would not have finished this book. Needless to say, any errors and shortcomings in the book are mine alone.

Several chapters of this book were published in an earlier form in the following works:

•    Chapter 5: The Ideological-Political Training of Iran’s Basij, Middle East Brief 44 (Waltham, MA: Crown Center for Middle East Studies at Brandeis University, 2010).

•    Chapter 7: Politics of Piety: The Basij and Moral Control of Iranian Society, Journal of the Middle East and Africa 2, issue 2 (2011): 207–19.

•    Chapter 10: The Feminization of Control: Iran’s Women Militia and Social Order in Iran, Hawwa: Journal of Women of the Middle East and the Islamic World 11, issue 1 (Spring 2013): 16–40.

•    Chapter 13: Paramilitarization of the Economy: The Case of Iran’s Basij Militia, Armed Forces & Society 38, no. 4 (October 2012): 625–48.

•    Chapter 14: The Role of the Basij in Iranian Politics, in Politics and Culture in Contemporary Iran: Challenging the Status Quo, edited by Abbas Milani and Larry Diamond (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2015).

Also, a few pages from the following papers have been revised and included in the chapters noted:

•    Chapter 9: Organization of Oppressed or Organization for Oppressing: Analysing the Role of the Basij Militia of Iran, Politics, Religion & Ideology 13, no. 4 (December 2012): 455–71.

•    Chapter 12: The Reign of Hard-Line Students in Iranian Universities, Middle East Quarterly 17, no. 3 (Summer 2010): 21–29.

•    Chapter 12: University under Siege: The Case of the Professors’ Basij Organization, Middle East Journal 67, no. 3 (2013) 363–79.

Part I: The Civil Militia and State Control

Chapter 1

The Basij: Nongovernmental Organization, Administered Mass Organization, or Militia?

In the summer of 2009, the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) was rocked by demonstrations throughout its major cities as people from all walks of life protested the disputed results of Mahmoud Ahmadinezhad’s reelection as president. In scenes that transfixed viewers from across the world, the Green Movement publicly protested the voting scam and then the clerical establishment itself. But no sooner had the protesters begun to mobilize popular support for ending the thirty-year theocracy than the Islamic regime’s shock troops, the Basij, and its cadet branches sprang into action to suppress the uprising.

Following the uprising, many questions arose concerning the paramilitary group, commonly referred to as the Basij, that had played such a large role in its suppression. Who are the Basij members? Why have they joined? To which social classes do they belong? What are their motivations? What is their level of commitment to the IRI? What is the Basij’s role in controlling Iranian society? There were many questions, but few answers.

Also, after the expansion of the Arab awakening in January 2011, which toppled several long-standing authoritarian regimes, there was much discussion about quietness and regime persistence within the IRI. Many questions came to the surface: Why had an Arab Spring occurred, and not an Iranian Spring? How has the IRI effectively controlled its population? And why is the regime steadfast in the face of significant regional change? This book attempts to provide some answers for these questions by analyzing the role of the Basij militia in imposing state control over Iranian society.

The Nature of the Basij

Although there have been many discussions regarding the Basij, the nature of this organization remains controversial. There are at least four different ideas about its nature and how it should be categorized. The first category—the official, state-supported designation—is as a nongovernmental organization (NGO). According to state propaganda, the Basij is an NGO that is completely independent from the state and represents the true will of the people. It depicts the Basij as operating independently from the IRI and as run solely by the people who join it voluntarily.¹ Needless to say, this approach is completely fabricated, because the Basij is part of Iran’s military apparatus, and it is legally, financially, and logistically dependent on the government, according to its Constitution. The remaining three categories require more in-depth anlysis.

The Basij as an Administered Mass Organization

The second approach categorizes the Basij as an administered mass organization (AMO).² According to Gregory Kazsa, who coined this term, AMOs are the products of World War I and have since been established by many fascist regimes. He defines an AMO as a mass civilian organization created and managed by a political regime to implement public policy.³ According to Kazsa, an AMO has three components:

•    Organization: An AMO is a formal organization with offices and bylaws.

•    Mass: The targeted membership ordinarily includes all or most people of a particular place of residence, employment, age, or gender.

•    Administered: External agencies of the regime define the AMO’s structure and mission and appoint its top leaders.⁴

AMOs, which are financially controlled by the government, are very hierarchical and vertical.⁵ One of an AMO’s aims is to enroll all or nearly all individuals by age, gender, workplace, industry, place of residence, or some mix of these criteria. AMOs are the state’s tools for organizing the people, mobilizing the regime’s supporters, countering the formation of opposition movements, and implementing state policy.⁶ In fact, the states use AMOs as weapons against autonomous organizations.

AMOs have had several positive functions for authoritarian regimes. They often successfully destroy other civil society organizations, recruit and organize millions of members, and control them using several methods—for example, martial dependency, in which AMOs make people materially dependent on the state. Other methods include the following

•    Consumption of time: AMOs occupy time and energy that members might otherwise give to autonomous activities;

•    Ritual of loyalty: AMOs compel people to publicly demonstrate their loyalty to the regime;

•    Honor: AMOs entice people to support the regime by bestowing honors onto the coherent administrative body;

•    Pseudopolitics: AMOs retain the appearance of meaningful political activity without its substance, creating the illusion of members’ participation in ruling; and

•    Self-directed local participation: Many AMOs allow their members to engage in some form of meaningful self-directed activity that will not threaten the regime, satisfying their desire for political participation without giving them any political clout.⁷

Neema Noori has applied the AMO framework to explain how the mobilization for the Iran-Iraq War from 1980 through 1988, the prosecution of the war, and the demobilization in its aftermath all have affected the politics of the present.⁸ Although the Basij is like an AMO in many ways, because it is financially controlled by the government and part of Iran’s military apparatus, it cannot be considered a completely civilian organization. As a part of the security establishment, the Basij has several military and security branches, which have been involved in both internal and foreign conflicts.

The Basij as a Political Party

The Basij’s hierarchical structure and the size of its membership (which numbers in the millions) have led some to compare it with other mass political parties. Reformist scholars, including Saeed Hajjarian, use the metaphor of the barrack-based party (hezb-e padegani) to refer to Iran’s political hard-liners’ systematic use of millions of Basij members as an organized collective of electoral foot soldiers.⁹ From this point of view, the Basij cluster network is like a mass political association that penetrates all corners of society. Like a political party, the Basij has also established several branches aimed at recruitment, indoctrination, and mobilization in political campaigns, whereby it functions as a voting machine. In this view, the Basij are the closest thing Iran has to an organized political party.¹⁰ In fact, one could argue that the Basij is very similar to the Iraqi Ba‘th Party under Saddam Hussein.¹¹ In his book Saddam Hussein’s Ba‘th Party: Inside an Authoritarian Regime, Joseph Sassoon offers an in-depth depiction of the structure and scope of the Ba‘th Party and explains how its branches permeated Iraqi society. He writes that the Ba‘th Party systemically penetrated every stratum of society and built an impressive political machine more powerful any other group, … which drew large numbers of people into its sphere of influence.¹² Like the Basij, the Ba‘th Party made efforts to politically indoctrinate its members and prepared them for a range of security and cultural missions, including the gathering of information and surveillance.¹³ Thus the nature of the Ba‘th Party and its presence in every dimension of Iraqi society were very similar to the infiltration of the Basij and its twenty subbranches into Iran.

However, despite the parallels that exist between the Basij’s structure and that of organized political parties, one cannot classify the Basij as such. The Basij is a part of Iran’s military apparatus, and thus it falls under control of a branch of the military, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

The Basij as a Militia

Because of this, some scholars have compared the Basij with the militia groups that were active during Iraq’s recent history, such as the Iraqi Popular Army and the Fadayeen-e Saddam.¹⁴ Both of these Iraqi militias were established to support Saddam’s Ba‘th Party against the Iraqi army, because the party did not trust the army as a loyal force. In this regard, these Iraqi militia forces are quite similar to the Basij, which was initially established to guard the clerical establishment in 1980. There are some additional commonalities between these militia forces and the Basij, including their use as an asymmetrical means of defense. However, there are important differences between the Basij and militias such as the Iraqi Popular Army and the Fadayeen-e Saddam. The primary divergence is that only a small group of the Basij’s members are armed and are involved in security and military operations. The other difference relates to the ideological commitment of the members of the organization. As Charles Western writes:

The Saddam Fedayeen [was] a secular force that was personally and viciously attached to Saddam Hussein, … while the ideology of the Basij is religious and therefore presented a much stronger link to the Islamic Revolutionary Government of Iran than the Saddam Fedayeen’s loyalty to an individual.¹⁵

Thus, most scholars categorize the Basij as a militia or a paramilitary group.¹⁶ Although many studies have examined militias, their origins, and their roles, especially in weak states, there has been less of a compromise on the definition of a militia and its characterization. That is why several names are used interchangeably to refer to nonstate actors—including militia, paramilitary, irregular armed forces, vigilante, local defense groups, and the like. In spite of these difficulties in establishing a coherent characterization for this type of organization, a militia is defined as an armed, substate group that has some level of organization. A civil militia is usually defined as a citizen army made up of free men between the ages of sixteen and sixty who performed occasional mandatory military services to protect their country.¹⁷

A militia differs from conventional military forces in many ways. One example is the difference in the degree and type of training that the members of a militia and a regular army receive. Militia members usually receive little training, and many scholars consider militias to be armed, state subsidiary forces that are not part of the regular security forces but have some level of governmental organization.¹⁸ However, contrary to popular belief, militia groups are not necessarily anti-state groups, like criminals or rebels.¹⁹ Instead, Bjørn Møller believes that the labels non-state or not quite state might be more appropriate for them.²⁰ Militias therefore can be categorized as either anti-state or pro-state military groups. The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia) is an example of anti-state militia, which aims to weaken the state and the political order. By contrast, in Sudan the Shurta Shabia (popular police) is a progovernment militia, which the state pays to assert its control over Sudanese society.²¹

In recent years, many studies have looked at the emergence and decline of militias. Many of the studies have focused on why governments use militias around the world. Although scholars have focused on the roles of militias in failed states, insurgencies, and even emerging new states, there has been little analysis of the militia’s role in a strong state.²² Some scholars have explained the emergence of state-sponsored militias as a response to persistent internal dangers, but according to Ariel Ahram, state-sponsored militias usually emerge in countries that have experienced revolutionary decolonization or state failure. These kinds of paths of dependence produce more opportunities for the emergence of a localized force.²³ Ahram argues that differences in the initial endowment of military capacity locked states on a path dependent course of military development, and that the absence or presence of paramilitaries as institutional forms has roots in how historical events of early revolutionary wars and subsequent external dangers combine to delimit options for force centralization or decentralization.²⁴

Progovernmental militias (PGM) are divided into two main groups: (1) informal PGMs and (2) semiofficial PGMs. Informal PGMs are loosely connected with the government but are not directly linked to the government, such as Sudan’s Janjaweed militia, which mainly involved implementing sharia (Islamic law) and Islamizing Sudanese society.²⁵ However, semiofficial PGMs have legal or semiofficial status and are more institutionalized. These groups might be subordinated to the regular security forces but be separate from the regular police or military, such as village defense forces in India.²⁶

PGMs perform a broad range of functions for the government. The militia is mainly involved in maintaining local defense, upholding law and order, counterinsurgency, repression, and population control.²⁷ Although militias usually are described as intelligence and initiative-poor groups that violate human rights and foster insecurity, they have a crucial role in dispensing force and controlling security, especially in weak states.²⁸ Militias are much cheaper for governments to operate than regular armed forces. They also require less training, and they remain under the control of the state. A further advantage of militias is their knowledge of the territory they control, because their members are often recruited from the local communities. Militia members tend to be more familiar with and more knowledgeable about the local terrain and the people who live in their localities. Militias, according to the definition given here, have full policing authority.²⁹ Most important, militias are willing to do the government’s dirty work, including the violation of human rights.³⁰ This enables governments to deny responsibility for less-than-savory tasks using the logic of plausible deniability.³¹ Therefore, some governments rely on militia groups to maintain state order in their territories.

The Militia and State Control

In addition to security missions, the militia can be involved in imposing state control. State control, in this context, includes the ways in which the state apparatus regulates people’s behavior in order to produce conformity with social and political norms, and thereby maintains social order. State control can be categorized in different ways, including formal and informal, or hard-line and soft-line modes.³² The hard-line mode usually refers to imposing control through hard tactics, such as armed repression and physical violence, whereas the soft-line mode usually includes less direct modes of oppression, such as propaganda and surveillance.³³

Although states use a combination of different methods, patterns, and agents to maintain social control in their territories, authoritarian regimes generally rely upon more coercive methods, such as political repression. Political repression, or what some scholars prefer to call the social control of dissidents, is the main component of the regime’s repertoire of sociopolitical control strategies.³⁴ As a broad concept, political repression refers to a variety of actions, ranging from steady pressure—the occasional police visit, arrest, or detentions—to widespread disappearance, torture, and killing.³⁵ Christian Davenport has identified two main forms of repressive actions: overt repression and covert repression. Overt repression works by imposing negative sanctions and violations of human integrity. These sanctions and violations include arrest, detention, dissident harassment, and disappearance.³⁶ Covert repression refers to any strategies employed to monitor and collect information about people through surveillance.³⁷

Although political repression is an effective method in the short term, which can neutralize the threat of rebellions in society, in the long term it is too costly and ineffective for encouraging popular loyalty to the state.³⁸ To reduce