Replication Data for: Ethnicity and Strategic Repression of Protest during the 2011 Syrian Uprising

Why do incumbent governments carry out harsher repression against some opposition groups than others? Drawing on research on the coalitional nature of revolutions, we con- tend that governments target repression at segments of the challenger group they perceive as most threatening to fragment the challenger coalition. We illustrate this argument by analyzing protest repression during the 2011 Syrian uprising. We find that protests in majority-Kurdish towns in Syria’s Northeast were significantly less likely to face lethal repression than nearby Sunni Arab towns protesting at the same rate. Qualitative evidence from interviews and the Arabic-language secondary literature demonstrate that the Syrian regime shaped its strategy of repression around diverting Kurdish protests from the regime- focused demands of the revolution, separating Kurds from the primarily Sunni Arab opposition. These findings have implications for how ethnic and other identities can be utilized by incumbents and how incumbent regimes communicate with their populations through the selective deployment of violence.

为何现任政府会对部分反对派团体实施较之其他团体更为严苛的镇压？基于有关革命联盟性质的既有研究，我们主张，政府会将镇压目标对准其认定为最有可能瓦解反对派联盟的挑战者群体分支。我们通过分析2011年叙利亚起义期间的抗议镇压行动，对这一论点进行了阐释。研究发现，叙利亚东北部库尔德人聚居城镇的抗议活动，与以同等抗议规模发起行动的周边逊尼派阿拉伯城镇相比，遭遇致命镇压的概率显著更低。来自访谈资料与阿拉伯语二手文献的定性证据表明，叙利亚政权围绕转移库尔德抗议活动脱离革命中聚焦现政权的诉求这一目标制定镇压策略，将库尔德群体与以逊尼派阿拉伯人为主体的反对派阵营相割裂。上述研究结果对于现任当权者如何利用族群及其他身份属性，以及现任政权如何通过选择性动用暴力与民众进行沟通，均具有启示意义。