The Nicaragua Protest Crisis in 2018–2019: Assessing the Logic of Government Responses to Protests

Despite constant monitoring, we lack a good explanation for the 2018–2019 protest crisis in Nicaragua. The escalation of protests, repression, duration, and the death toll are surprising. Applying a novel political and economic cost framework, we benchmark Nicaragua’s historical and recent political protests and explain the Ortega administration’s responses, thus providing a rich case (with comparative data for context) that makes sense of this extraordinary period of protest. The empirical analysis buttresses our qualitative case study of protest motivations and tactics and extreme state violence that define four phases of the conflict. The combination of qualitative and quantitative analyses creates one of the first robust studies of protest–response dynamics of this protest crisis. We conclude that these protests are unique with respect to previous protests in the country and the region and that government repression was a logical response in some phases but was inconsistently applied.

Rethinking Authoritarian Resilience and the Coercive Apparatus

A state's coercive apparatus can be strong in some ways and weak in others. Using interview data from security personnel in China, this study expands current conceptualizations of authoritarian durability and coercive capacity to consider a wide range of security activities. While protest response in China is centrally controlled and strong, other types of crime control are decentralized and systematically inadequate in ways that compromise the state's coercive power and may ultimately feed back into protest. Considering security activities beyond protest control exposes cracks in China's authoritarian system of control—an area where it is typically perceived to thrive—and calls into question our understanding of regime resilience as well as our current approach to assessing the role coercive capacity plays in authoritarian resilience elsewhere.

Lebanese protest response will deepen economic malaise

Headline LEBANON: Protest response will deepen economic malaise

Hong Kong protest response will only help in long run

Headline HONG KONG: Protest response will only help in long run

Russia reverts to repression as protest response

Headline RUSSIA: Kremlin reverts to repression

Russian protest response suggests tougher line

Headline RUSSIA: Protest response suggests tougher line

Bangladesh protest response will raise rights concerns

Headline BANGLADESH: Protest response raises rights concerns