ABORTION BANS ARE A TOOL OF POLITICAL REPRESSION

“Keep Abortion Legal” sign at a protest in Washington, DC. Photo courtesy of Gayatri Malhotra.

• BYEMILY HENCKEN RITTER AND JENNIFER N. BARNES
• July 5, 2022

By Emily Hencken Ritter and guest contributor Jennifer N. Barnes

On June 24, 2022, the US Supreme Court released a decision in the case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization that overturned the precedent of Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 decision that protected the right to an abortion. The decision leaves the question of abortion rights up to individual states, with 11 states already making abortion illegal or heavily restricted and another 11 set to do the same soon.

The decision delegates the policy to subnational and private actors, allowing them to be repressors rather than the federal government itself. Criminalizing abortion is a tactic of discriminatory political repression, one that highlights the cooperation between different actors to control women’s lives.

CRIMINALIZATION OF ABORTION IS DISCRIMINATORY

The decision inherently disproportionally affects women and girls. An estimated 73 million induced abortions take place globally each year. Approximately 45 percent occur unsafely, primarily in developing countries. Unsafe abortion is a leading—and entirely preventable—cause of maternal deaths and morbidities worldwide. As shown in the figure below, using data from UNWomen’s Database, the US already leads on maternal mortality among industrialized democracies.

Abortion bans do little to prevent them from occurring. Instead, restricting abortion makes critical contraception and healthcare services more difficult for women—especially poor women—to obtain, or inaccessible altogether, in a country that already underperforms on women’s health relative to other high-income countries.

Abortion bans are considered discrimination under international human rights law. They directly violate numerous rights of women and girls, including the right to life; the right to the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health; the right to benefit from scientific progress and its realization; the right to decide freely and responsibly on the number, spacing and timing of children; and the right to be free from torture, cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment and punishment.

Why would a country that values human rights and equality allow such obvious discrimination and harm? The answer is simple: because some Americans—men and women, authorities and civilians, people at the national and local levels—benefit directly from control over the social and economic prospects of women and girls.

CRIMINALIZING ABORTION IS A TACTIC OF POLITICAL REPRESSION

Repression—when governments use violence or other coercive tactics to raise the costs of challenging political power—can take many forms. Often it looks like police using violence against protestors, laws restricting freedom of assembly, or barriers to voting. Repression also takes more subtle forms like discouraging ethnic groups from forming organizations or providing low-quality education to one group compared to another. These more nuanced forms of repression make it difficult for minoritized people to band together and use creative tactics to change their lack of power in society and politics.

Political decisions such as the overturning of Roe v. Wade fall into this second, more subtle category of repression. In making it more difficult to obtain an abortion, many women will endure greater and more lasting trauma from rape, financial burdens for which they have few resources and higher barriers to economic, social, and political advancement. Outlawing abortion will affect women’s ability to obtain higher education and therefore economic advancement. Without control over when and with whom to have a child, women lack control over their economic, social, and political experiences.

Those in favor of restrictive and discriminatory policies benefit from the ability to maintain sexual control, economic control, and power over household outcomes. Men benefit from more freedom, more money, and more power than women, and the authorities whom the dominant group elects to power benefit from their support.

CRIMINALIZING ABORTION IS ALSO A TACTIC OF SOCIETAL REPRESSION

In new research, we argue that government actors benefit from and allow private actors to repress women and other minority groups as part of a repressive strategy to collude with members of a dominant social group in order to control and disenfranchise a minoritized group.

In a process we label societal repression, members of a dominant societal group derive social, economic, and political benefits from their position in the social hierarchy (or caste). The dominant social group is dominant because of the power they hold over other groups, not necessarily because they are a majority. Men maintain that position and its economic and social benefits by, first, enforcing the hierarchy against the marginalized group in private spheres, like arranging marriages, restricting girls’ access to education, and committing domestic violence at home, or refusing to hire or fund women in local economies. Second, the dominant group collaborates with government authorities to create policies that allow the violating behaviors to occur without punishment. For their part, government actors remain in political power with the support of the dominant group.

In other words, both government authorities and the dominant group benefit from societal repression, largely because it happens in spaces where governments cannot reach and the public cannot see. Men benefit in social and economic spheres when abortion rights are restricted, and those men vote for leaders who will restrict them. Of course, many women also support abortion bans, and their agreement with the dominant group gives them some access to its power. Indeed, opponents of abortion access often don’t think of their position as being one of strategic repression, instead focusing on questions of morality, but it still has the effect of restructuring who has more power and who has less. Governments disenfranchise and discourage women from participating in society and challenging them politically, continuing male dominance.

IT COULD GET WORSE

In his concurring opinion, Justice Clarence Thomas goes as far as to suggest that the court should, in future cases, also reconsider Griswold (protecting privacy rights related to the use of contraceptives), Lawrence (protecting consensual same-sex sexual activity), and Obergefell (protecting same-sex marriage). In doing so, he connects the logic of the Dobbs decision to other US legal decisions that protect personal and social rights for women and LGBTIA+ persons. If these rollbacks occur, these minoritized groups will lose the gains they have made in the social hierarchy of the United States, with benefits once again accruing to the dominant social group and the government it supports.

Though we often think of repression as direct—like security agents using violence against minorities—women’s rights are violated and controlled most often in the private and social spheres. Government authorities benefit from it and avoid responsibility for it by delegating the discrimination to private actors, as Turkey does with femicide, Pakistan does with girls’ education, and Iceland does with domestic abuse. Women’s rights are violated, and the government keeps its hands officially clean.

Because repression through abortion bans is indirect, putting pressure on the government to change its policies and practices will probably be less effective for improving women’s rights than it is with other, more direct types of repression. With abortion rights now determined sub-nationally, advocates for women’s rights must simultaneously address the front-line repressors—members of the dominant cohort—and the state authorities that make the policies. It’s a two-front battle, but one that affects and marginalizes half the US and global population. That’s a battle worth fighting.

Emily Hencken Ritter is a permanent contributor at PVG, as well as an associate professor at Vanderbilt University. Jennifer N. Barnes is a political science PhD student at Vanderbilt University.

https://politicalviolenceataglance.org/

 

CAN RUSSIA “EXPORT” ITS CONSPIRACY THEORIES?

The Kremlin at night. Photo courtesy of Sergey Golopolosov.

• BYSCOTT RADNITZ
• June 22, 2022

Guest post by Scott Radnitz

Ukraine is run by Nazis. NATO is arming Ukraine as a proxy to invade Russia. America has been funding biolabs in Ukraine to create viruses that can infect Russia. In the past few months, Russian state media has been putting out lies and conspiracy theories like these in order to justify Russia’s war on Ukraine. In fact, for years the Kremlin has promoted conspiracy theories that depict Russia as a victim of various geopolitical machinations. The audience for these narratives is primarily domestic—even autocracies prefer to have popular support—but the Kremlin has also sought to disseminate its messages abroad through various media channels. How effective has this effort been?

My recent article in International Studies Quarterly points to barriers in the spread of conspiracy theories through the media but highlights the importance of geopolitical affinities among states as a basis for shared beliefs. I surveyed 1,000 people each in Georgia and Kazakhstan in 2017 and found that people who consume news from Russia are not more conspiratorial overall. However, when it comes to the conspiracy theories the Kremlin has pushed most aggressively, respondents in pro-Russian Kazakhstan, and especially ethnic Russians who live there, are most likely to endorse them.

Russia in the Putin era has sought to convince the world that it has been cruelly mistreated by the West since the Soviet collapse. Its narrative is often conspiratorial, involving malevolent and grandiose plots by actors including the US, NATO, the CIA, and George Soros, to weaken, throttle, or dismember Russia. The Kremlin has worked to ensure that Russians believe that the West is plotting against them, and has targeted audiences abroad, especially in countries with Russian-speaking populations.

Despite their differences—Kazakhstan is generally aligned with Russia on geopolitical matters and has a large population of ethnic Russians whom the Kremlin targets to foster pro-Russian sentiment, while Georgia is largely pro-West and generally resistant to Russian soft power—respondents from both countries were inclined to believe a wide variety of conspiracy theories. These include conspiracies about malevolent cabals that secretly control world events, and that the government perpetrates acts of terrorism on its own soil. Georgians were more conspiratorial overall, but Kazakhstanis were more likely to endorse three pro-Russian geopolitical claims: America supports fascists in Ukraine, the 9/11 attacks were perpetrated by the American government, and the US employs non-governmental organizations to overthrow governments in the former Soviet Union.

Surprisingly, however, the Russian media is not the main influence on people’s beliefs. Instead, two factors mattered. First, Russian Kazakhstanis were more likely to believe Russia’s geopolitical conspiracy theories (about NGOs and fascists) than non-Russian Kazakhstanis. I argue that this is because they maintain informal cultural and family ties to citizens in Russia and are more exposed to official Russian narratives, leading them to sympathize with Russia’s foreign policy goals.

A second important finding relates to people’s orientation toward the state. Past research has established how alienation, cynicism, and distrust are associated with conspiracy belief. In the context of the post-Soviet region, I found that people who do not trust their government, consider it nondemocratic, believe politics in their country is faring poorly, and (in Kazakhstan) report having paid a bribe, were more likely to believe both generic and geopolitical conspiracy theories.

What do these findings imply for Russia’s “information war”? Belief in conspiracy theories is widespread in the region, so people are potentially susceptible to claims that build on their suspicious worldviews. Yet, despite the Kremlin’s prolific use of conspiracism in the media, the attitudes of Georgians and Kazakhstanis cannot be attributed to Russian propaganda. Their openness to conspiracy theories instead appears to stem from their quotidian experiences with corruption, malfeasance, and abuse by those in power.

When disseminating propaganda, the Kremlin is best able to reach those who are already sympathetic to its foreign policy. This is consistent with abundant research showing that people tend to believe conspiracy theories that accord with their preexisting views and identities, via motivated reasoning, just as with other political beliefs.

Contrary to the heightened concern about the allure of Russian propaganda on television and social media, Russia faces challenges in delivering its messages to audiences in its own geopolitical backyard. People are subject to diverse and often competing communications from domestic media and personal encounters. A state’s actions can also work at cross-purposes with its messaging. For example, people who have seen images of civilians executed by Russian soldiers in Ukraine are likely to resist narratives in which Russia casts itself as a victim. Thus, “sharp power”—the use of informational tools by authoritarian states to gain leverage over unsuspecting publics abroad—may be less a threat than is generally assumed. Russia’s struggles to shape opinions in its “near abroad” mirror the poor performance of states with fewer linkages and tarnished reputations in the regions where they seek to exert influence, a lesson the US has learned in the Middle East and Latin America.

Even within Russia, it is unclear how much citizens accept the government’s rationale for the war, or simply censor themselves out of fear. The fact that Russians, like many Georgians and Kazakhstanis, have grounds to distrust their politicians implies that they may ingest domestic propaganda with a healthy dose of cynicism. Governments have the means to inundate their audiences with their preferred messages, but they ultimately cannot dictate what people choose to believe.

Scott Radnitz is an Associate Professor of Russian and Eurasian Studies in the Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington. He is the author of Revealing Schemes: The Politics of Conspiracy in Russia and the Post-Soviet Region (Oxford, 2021).

https://politicalviolenceataglance.org/

 

MAKE LOVE NOT WAR

The conjecture that being single drives young men to commit political violence is compelling.

A “make love not war” banner at a protest. Photo courtesy of Silar.

• BYPOLITICALVIOLENCEATAGLANCE
• June 27, 2022

Guest post by Tyler Kustra

The conjecture that being single drives young men to commit political violence is compelling. It has been presented in academic articles and the popular press. It’s been discussed in classified diplomatic cables, unclassified strategic planning documents, and reports to Congress.

The idea is intuitive—and, one might note, heteronormative. Young men face a choice between kissing and killing. The realities of life as a terrorist or a guerilla mean that they cannot do both. For a young man with a wife, the choice is obvious: he would rather stay home with his bride than abandon her to go and become a rebel or a terrorist. Young men without wives do not face the same quandary; they have no partners to leave behind. In fact, they may benefit more from participating in political violence than married men, in so far as doing so increases their economic and social capital, thereby increasing their chances of finding a mate.

Observational studies of individual terrorists and guerillas support this theory. They are almost always single. This applies whether we are talking about Palestinian suicide bombers today or Chinese rebels 172 years ago.

The implications are substantial. Across Asia, from India to China, there are approximately 1.10 young men for every young woman, thereby dooming millions of men to go through life alone without the possibility of finding a heterosexual partner. If being single caused young men to commit political violence, then Asia should be a powder keg ready to explode with terrorism and civil war. Men in the Muslim world tend to marry much later in life. Could this provide an explanation for the higher levels of political violence in Islamic countries? And if being single causes young men to engage in civil war and terrorism, might this provide a novel solution to the problem of political violence: finding these young men wives.

Yet does having a surfeit of single young men increase the level of political violence in a country? My paper Make Love, Not War investigates just that. We already know that an increase in the proportion of young men in a country increases the probability of civil war and terrorism, but does the marital status of these young men make any difference? To test this, I ask if an additional single young man causes a greater increase in the probability of civil war and terrorism than an additional married young man.

The results are surprising: there is no statistical difference between an additional single young man and an additional married young man. The results hold regardless of whether I consider civil war or terrorism.

This has substantial implications for international relations. It means that the abundance of bachelors in Asia will not turn the continent into a powder keg. It means that the higher levels of terrorism and civil war in predominately Muslim countries cannot be explained by marriage rates. And it means that political violence cannot be prevented by finding single young men wives (an untenable solution regardless, since it treats women as objects to placate the desires of violent men).

It also cries out for an explanation. How can it be that almost all terrorists and guerillas are single while having more single young men has the same effect on the probability of political violence as having more married young men does?

If participating in political violence caused young men to be single, this would explain why almost all terrorists and guerillas are single. This could be because women are reluctant to date a man who is on the run from the authorities and risking his life fighting them. Meanwhile, men who are considering going off to fight might choose to remain single to prevent their potential wives from going through the pain of being abandoned and widowed.

Moreover, since terrorists and guerillas make up only a tiny fraction of a country’s population, their marital status is unlikely to affect national-level statistics. This would explain the lack of a country-level relationship and resolve the paradox of observing an individual-level relationship between marital status and participation in political violence but not finding a country-level association. And it would mean that “Make Love, Not War” is not an effective slogan.

Tyler Kustra is an assistant professor of politics and international relations at the University of Nottingham.

https://politicalviolenceataglance.org/

 

FOOD INSECURITY AND UNREST: WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW

Photo courtesy of Rawpixel.

• BYTHOMAS S. BENSON, ORE KOREN, AND BENJAMIN E. BAGOZZI
• July 12, 2022

Guest post by Thomas S. Benson, Ore Koren, and Benjamin E. Bagozzi

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has sparked fears that skyrocketing commodity prices—especially of wheat (Ukraine and Russia together account for about one-quarter of the world’s exports), oil, and gas—will cause a global wave of food protests. War, coupled with rapidly rising inflation—which has also been linked to bread riots—and more frequent climatic shocks suggest that concerns about food insecurity creating global unrest are timely and warrant further examination.

At the same time, framing the complexities of sociopolitical environments as simple “kneejerk” reactions to rising food insecurity risks oversimplifying the situation and our ability to address it. Previous studies that identify a clear relationship between food prices and protests emphasize this risk. 

Therefore, while food insecurity can clearly raise the risk of mass unrest, the key question is: When do people, faced with food insecurity, choose to mobilize? In a recent paper, we leveraged Twitter data by time and location from several cities in Kenya to answer this question. We coded—using machine learning techniques—hundreds of thousands of tweets in both English and Swahili to identify whether each tweet featured any reference to food or water stress.

Interestingly, we did not find that rising food insecurity, in and of itself, contributed to a higher risk of social unrest. However, we did find that the frequency of unrest events in urban contexts noticeably increased when and where people were simultaneously experiencing both acute food insecurity and acute water scarcity. In contrast, when there is a lack of water scarcity, greater food insecurity was found—if anything—to reduce the frequency of unrest events.

What explains this result? One possibility relates to the importance of context. Researchers who study environmental conflict emphasize that relationships between food and water security and unrest are often moderated. In other words, environmental and climatic factors have a conditional impact on socioeconomic determinants of social conflict/unrest, rather than a simple direct effect. In some contexts, food and/or water insecurity can lead to more violence, in others to none, and yet in other contexts it might lower the risk of unrest.

Another explanation pertains to the fact that the indicators usually used to measure food insecurity, such as food prices, weather variability, crop yields, and even surveys, cannot capture how insecurity is felt by people and societies in real time. These measures also rarely allow researchers to distinguish between different types of stress, such as separating food insecurity from water insecurity.

This is where the value of leveraging Twitter data to effectively measure food and other types of insecurity became apparent. When leveraged effectively, these data indicate a direct and proximate measure of how individuals’ lives are impacted by staple security, which we define as food and water security together. Using these data, researchers can measure different aspects of food insecurity including, for example, stress resulting not only from climatic variability but also from social and economic shocks, including rising food prices, and supply chain issues due to external factors—such as the war in Ukraine. Being able to identify the real-time impacts of food insecurity and distinguish them from the impacts of water insecurity allows us to assess how the two impacts relate to social unrest.

There are some potential limitations with our findings and interpretation. Only a subset of the world’s (typically younger, wealthier, and more urban) population is on Twitter—leading our study to focus only on urbanized areas. Likewise, while the ability of Twitter data to capture how people perceive such issues is a major advantage, it also poses a potential problem of inference. People may experience food insecurity differently across different contexts: what is considered food insecurity in Kenya might be different from how people perceive it in Papua New Guinea or Germany. In addition, the approach used in identifying food and water insecurity tweets in Kenya may not be definitive—as meanings of language can change over time and in the face of different crises.  

At the same time, these findings have important implications. If unrest arises due to a combination of insecurities—water and food, politics and food, or something else—then being able to address one insecurity, in effect, can in some cases neutralize the effect of the other. As we find, food security, in and of itself, is unlikely to generate mobilization. This presents a factor to be considered by policymakers in the wake of a global food crisis that raises questions over the extent to which any social unrest could be generated. It also presents implications for forecasting models of food riots that may be overpredicting the risk of unrest.

Rather, it appears the relationship between food insecurity and unrest—due to rising food prices and otherwise—is a function of socioeconomic features, such as the availability of social safety nets and storage capacity; and political factors, such as government responsiveness to the plight of its citizens. The capacity of societies to be resilient and absorb economic shocks, including rising food prices, should be the focus of policymakers and non-governmental organizations seeking to prevent or reduce the risk of unrest, especially in vulnerable countries.

Thomas S. Bensona is a Princeton Dissertation Scholar and a Dissertation Fellow (ABD Ph.D Candidate) in the department of Political Science and International Relations at the University of Delaware. Ore Koren is an Assistant Professor of international relations and methodology in the Department of Political Science, Indiana University, Bloomington. Benjamin E. Bagozzi is an Associate Professor of Political Science & International Relations at the University of Delaware.

https://politicalviolenceataglance.org/

Dedicated researchers help protect giants of the deep

Zhang Zhihao

A sperm whale can grow to more than 49 feet in length

(PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY)

In many ways, Li Songhai is the direct opposite of Captain Ahab, the vengeful captain in Herman Melville’s novel Moby Dick.

Unlike Ahab, who was obsessed with hunting a giant white sperm whale, Li is dedicated to studying and protecting these creatures in the South China Sea.

Li, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Deep-Sea Science and Engineering, leads one of the country’s deep-sea marine mammal research teams. The team comprises about 20 people who, he says, are “physically, mentally and spiritually tested” by the harsh conditions for oceanic expeditions in the South China Sea.

Li’s team has found that there is a good chance that the South China Sea is a nursing ground for the endangered sperm whale, the largest toothed whale in the world, which can grow to more than 49 feet in length.

The team’s findings were published in the journal Deep Sea Research Part I: Oceanographic Research Papers in April, the first time it had featured a study by Chinese scientists on marine mammals.

Nine groups of sperm whales were sighted in northern areas of the South China Sea from 2019 to 2021

(PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY)

Studying sperm whales and other mammals in the South China Sea is of great scientific, ecological and strategic significance for China’s conservation, management and development of deep-sea biological resources in the region, Li said.

According to the team’s study, nine groups of sperm whales were sighted in northern areas of the South China Sea from 2019 to 2021. They were seen south-east of the island province of Hainan and north of the Xisha Islands. Each group comprised five to seven whales, and seven groups were found to be nursing one or two calves.

Throughout history there have been reports of stranded sperm whales sighted in China’s coastal provinces, Li said, but until now scientists have been unable to directly confirm that there are sperm whale populations in the country’s coastal waters.

“When I first saw a live sperm whale in the South China Sea in 2019 I couldn’t believe my eyes. The sight of a single whale is breathtaking enough, but several times we saw a mother whale swimming with her calf, accompanied by a group of Fraser’s dolphins. This was a sight to behold.”

While adult male sperm whales travel thousands of miles looking for food and mates, females with their calves do not follow suit. Coupled with the fact that the South China Sea has ample food sources for sperm whales, it is possible that it is also a key hunting and breeding ground for the creatures, Li said.

“As these whales are such an essential part of a healthy marine ecosystem, China may need to improve its policies related to marine ecological protection to shield these valuable creatures and other undersea resources from intrusive human activities.”

Such work includes enhancing marine biology research in the South China Sea and establishing a national marine protected area to safeguard waters around sperm whale nurseries, Li said, similar to marine protected areas in countries such as Australia, Brazil, Greece, the United Kingdom and the United States.

“For many countries, the sperm whale has been a flagship creature for marine research and a poster child for marine conservation,” Li said.

“This is because sperm whales are peaceful creatures that do not compete with humans for resources on land – yet they play a crucial role in the sustainability of the oceans that benefits all of us. This makes them truly altruistic friends of humankind.”

Previously published on Chinadaily.com.cn