The more fear a government inflicts on its citizen, the greater risks of civil disorder it carries.

Thanks Coltrane. My opponent concedes that fear leads to less civil disorder when comparing autocracies to each other. Thus, I've proven that the resolution fails to hold true at least 50% of the time. Even if my opponent DID prove that it holds true the other 50% of the time, in democracies, you should still vote Con on presumption. If the resolution were "if you flip a coin and it lands heads 5 times in a row, it will land tails the next time" and I prove that it will in fact land heads again, 50% of time, then you would negate. If the resolution were "US military intervention is bad" and I prove that 50% of US military interventions ended up being good, then you would vote Con because Pro fails to meet the burden of proof. 50% does not a BOP make. Based purely on argumentation presented in the debate, using case-based proof, I've proven that repression succeeded in Syria (relative to Egypt), in China, in Singapore, and in Iran relative to Tunisia. Lastly, let's see if more repressive democracies are more at risk of civil disorder. The problem with this argument is that repression co-correlates with weak democratic governance - normally the governments that are both democratic and repressive are illiberal democracies with weak state institutions, which have to resort to repression out of a position of weakness, rather than a position of strength. This means that repression isn't causing the civil disorder, the lack of strong state institutions is (meaning people are NOT afraid of the repression, knowing that it is a bluff). When you look at strong governance and repression in democracies, like the United States, you see that repression works. Remember how no one in the CIA stepped forward to rebut the Bush administration's claims of WMD in Iraq, even though analysts like Valerie Plame knew the evidence was completely flawed. It's because when Plame's husband finally stepped forward, the Bush administration threw her to the wolves, outing her identity as a covert operative in retaliation, letting Scooter Libby take the fall, and then having Bush commute his sentence. This explains the lack of genuine civil unrest during the decision to go to war with Iraq. Notice the lack of protests in the US (more repressive - PATRIOT ACT) compared to the French, who are more liberal and protest constantly. According to a study by Aldon Morris of Northwestern University, repression in the South would have prevented the NAACP from succeeding, had it not been for Northern sympathies. . http://www.sociology.northwestern.edu... She says, "The consequence of these repressive actions was to make it practically impossible for NAACP activists to operate. " If the South were its own democracy, repression would clearly have succeeded in preventing the civil rights movement from flourishing and achieving victory. So in democracies, repression may make civil disorder more likely but only when it DOESN'T actually generate fear. In fact, look to when large numbers of people start protesting: when they see that the protest movement is on the cusp of success and they sense State weakness. That's why democracy movements come in spurts - because people take heart from another country's success and stop being afraid; they stop believing that the government's threat of force is legitimate. Meaning people don't start civil disorder until they cease to be afraid of the State.