In an unprecedented era of rebellion, social mobilisation, repression and state terror, regime leaders have found themselves challenged by citizens to step–down from the political sphere. Often,...Show moreIn an unprecedented era of rebellion, social mobilisation, repression and state terror, regime leaders have found themselves challenged by citizens to step–down from the political sphere. Often, the response to these challenges is to repress citizens into political quiescence. However, just as much as protests can be unsuccessful, as can the tools used to suppress them. This thesis will evaluate the effects of repression on protests demands through a quantitative, large–N study of the repressiveness of a regime (on a scale of 1–5), and the demands of protests (regime change or not) in the Middle East and North Africa countries. This was done by combining the Political Terror Scale, and Chenoweth & Shay’s NAVCO1.3. Furthermore, by exploring the threat perception theory, the backlash hypothesis, and conducting a Chi–Square test of the above variables, the thesis came to the conclusion that there is a positive, moderate correlation between repressiveness of regime and protest demands, as well as being statistically significant.Show less
