“The Hands That Would be Raised Against Us Have to be Broken”: Violent Spectacle and the Law Under Aspiring Autocracy
Date of Award
Spring 2023
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Department
Political Science
First Advisor
Wood, Elisabeth
Abstract
This dissertation seeks to understand the role of public spectacles of violence in the consolidation of autocratic rule. I shed light on variation in two specific elements of repressive violence: the extent and manner in which state violence is legally rationalized and its level of visibility. Combined, the spectrums of legality and visibility offer a powerful framework to interpret repressive violence as a form of autocratic communication. I argue that visible violence that transgresses the bounds of national law—which I term extrajudicial violent display—is correlated with conditions of insecure autocratic control. I argue that this is because extrajudicial violent display serves as a mechanism for the aspiring autocrat and their repressive apparatus to navigate the murky waters of unstable control when a regime’s distributive and coercive apparatuses are limited. Specifically, I propose three ways in which extrajudicial violent display serves as a mechanism: 1) as a form of costly service to signal commitment to the regime; 2) as a form of socialization into a politicized pillar of the security forces or into the political party, and 3) as a means of generating perceptions of power. I argue that violence that is tolerated during this uncertain period ultimately shapes longer-term policies of repression. I build my theory primarily through an inductive ethnographic case study in Bangladesh. I observe how patterns of repressive violence in Bangladesh shifted over the last decade as the ruling party has consolidated autocratic control. I draw on interviews with families of victims of enforced disappearance, human rights activists and experts, whistleblowers and defectors from the regime, diplomats, and UN officials. Additionally, I apply discourse analysis to dozens of speeches, police reports, media statements, and legislation to analyze how language justifying repression is used as part of an autocratic lexicon to reinforce control. Finally, I draw on two original datasets on political violence events in Bangladesh to identify patterns of enforced disappearances and of public political violence. Ultimately, this dissertation lays the groundwork to better understand and predict patterns of repressive violence during the critical period of autocratic consolidation and suggests directions for future research.
Recommended Citation
Bleckner, Julia Alison, "“The Hands That Would be Raised Against Us Have to be Broken”: Violent Spectacle and the Law Under Aspiring Autocracy" (2023). Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations. 934.
https://elischolar.library.yale.edu/gsas_dissertations/934
