The Art of Blaming: Repression in the 2019 Hong Kong Protest

• In Event: Protests and Violence in Democracies & Autocracies

Abstract

Under what condition does state repression against a violent yet popular movement succeed? Existing social movement theories tend to see this question is self-contradictory: violent movements are barely popular and repression against popular movement tends to backfire. Yet, my mixed-method investigations of the 2019 Hong Kong Protest show an alternative pattern between repression and protest by demonstrating two competing narratives. On the one hand, time-series models find meaningful predictive power of repression over protest occurrences. Targeted repression positively predicts movement occurrences, whereas indiscriminate repression predicts the opposite. On the other hand, process tracing shows that tactical changes in responses to repression weaken the formal organization. When repression raises the cost of collective actions, protesters respond with decentralization. But it undermines the disciplinary capacities of a historically salient nonviolent repertoire. Contrasting these two findings shows violent protesters and their supporters do not seek concession extraction. Instead, the movement becomes insensitive to repression and maintains its mobilization with a diminished chance of success. This research indicates how tactical innovations result in an unintended consequence of movement failure in which formal organizations cannot substantiate their political claims.

Author

• Zitian Sun, McGill University