Manhandling and mediation: unpacking the repressive repertoire in Kazakhstan’s 2016 anti-land reform protests

Abstract

ABSTRACT Regimes generally possess multifaceted repressive repertoires. When faced with societal challengers, a regime can utilize overt or covert forms of coercion as well as indirect forms of repression, known as channeling. Using case material from Central Asia, this article investigates the interplay between channeling and coercion in two contexts: 1) the regulation of civil liberties; and 2) Kazakhstan’s efforts to demobilize a protest wave. Through an overview of freedom of assembly laws across the region, we demonstrate that most Central Asian states mix coercive and channeling tactics to limit opportunities for contentious acts. We then analyze Kazakhstan’s repressive reactions to a single coherent national protest wave (the 2016 anti-land reform protest). Our analysis reveals that in response to the threat of these protests, the Kazakhstani regime utilized coercive and channeling tactics in roughly equal measure. We show that the most prominent form of channeling attempted was elite mediation, whereby officials personally encouraged protesters to relocate to non-public spaces and/or offered to articulate collective grievances to higher authorities in exchange for protest dispersal. Through evaluating the role of channeling in this wave we demonstrate how non-democratic regimes can maintain regime stability when challenged without relying solely on overt forms of coercion.