Political Repression and Government Effectiveness

Abstract

It seems logical that when a state is doing a good job with regard to the economy, infrastructure, education, and the provision of public goods, citizens will be less disenchanted with their government and less prone to either condone or engage in any form of dissident behavior requiring enhanced state repression. Given this reasoning, this paper formally proposes that state repression is negatively related to government performance, and uses cross country regression analysis to test the notion. The results of the empirical investigation provide support for the idea. Thus, it appears, just as theoretically proposed, that governments that work well, have less need to use force against their citizens, and repress less.