Surveillance of Repression: Theory and Implementation

A repressive regime can suppress dissent (e.g., protest) after it manifests (e.g., by beating or arresting protesters) or prevent it beforehand (e.g., by obstructing public spaces). We separately study and measure these two forms of repression, focusing on the case of political protest. We show in a model that preventive repression makes protest less predictable. We introduce a new database of security alerts that includes advance warning of protest. We validate the database against objectively measured events and use it to produce global, monthly indices of repression grounded in our model. We show that these indices track salient episodes of repression and predict public expressions of human rights concerns. We find that additional government resources increase prevention but not suppression. We argue that these indices can be a valuable tool for surveillance by the international community and analysis by the research community.