ABSTRACT
After presenting the theoretical framework, this chapter provides a general, macro-level analysis of how protest and political regimes impact upon repression, and of how political regimes and repression affect protest. It focuses on Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa from 1977 to 2002. Quantitative studies have traditionally used samples that pooled the largest number of countries for which data were available (e.g. Davenport 1995; Muller and Weede 1994; Poe et al. 1999). But the relationship between the variables of interest might substantially differ, and be driven by completely different processes, in a sample of widely diverse countries. In this book, I follow the approach of restricting my analysis to a set of more homogeneous cases.1 I concentrate my analysis on a relatively similar set of countries from Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa. Although each country has its own unique history and features, the Latin American countries share many characteristics, such as history, culture and societal qualities, which influence the relationship between dissent and state repression. Also African countries share many characteristics that are not controlled for in the analysis.2 In the following, I first discuss the operationalization of the variables. Then I outline the methodology that is employed to analyse the data, before presenting the results of the investigation of protest and repression in Latin America and Africa.
