A theory of public dissent, state repression, policy change and repression backfire through policy signalling

Even in authoritarian states, dissent is not always repressed and repression is occasionally followed by an increase in dissent. I propose a simple explanation: When a population is uncertain about whether its government's interest in conducting a certain policy is aligned or misaligned with its own, repression may signal misaligned interest as the government then has more to lose from policy change, thus having more to gain from repressing dissent. The population then gains more from dissent in expected terms. The game devised to show this distinguishes between government repression's ability to directly reduce policy change induced by dissent and to make dissent more costly for the population, as well as both government types’ direct cost from the disruption caused by dissent, the cost of policy change to a misaligned type, a direct cost of repression, and a direct cost of dissent in terms of more general hindrances to public expression. This facilitates systematic consideration of the role of institutions and technological change. The approach allows for the analysis of policy dynamics over and above regime change in the absence of democratic structures for political participation. Simple extensions shed light on incentives to invest in opacity of government policy preferences, propaganda, and in bulk surveillance to learn the population's policy preferences.