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

Thanks Coltrain. I decided to cite an online source, rather than Collier (which is from a book), so my opponent could access it. C1) U-shaped relationship between regime type and political violence/unrest According to Thomas David Mason in the book Caught in the Crossfire, "Empirical support for this proposition is found in the frequently cited "inverted-U curve" relationship between repression and civil violence"; at the top left of the U, the more authoritarian a regime is, the less likely it is to experience civil violence because "autocracy represses any possibility of mobilizing for violent conflict"; the bottom of the U is an anocracy, meaning a hybrid regime incorporating elements of both autocracy and democracy (such as a dictatorial president with a real, if somewhat neutered, parliament), and as you move up the right side of the U, democracy increases, and with it, violence decreases as there are more outlets for dealing with frustration without resorting to civil violence. [1] What this ultimately means is that the more repressive an authoritarian regime is, the less civil violence that it sees because people are too afraid to organize. This is precisely what we see in North Korea, which on the Polity IV index (a typical democracy index used by political scientists) ranks as the most authoritarian regime. According to Bruce Bechtol in the book Defiant Failed State, North Koreans are afraid to even talk to neighbors about politics because they may inform on them to the secret police. Half of North Koreas military expenditures go towards domestic monitoring. Obviously in such an environment, civil unrest is less likely. Iraq is another perfect example that Paul Collier talks about. Saddam Hussein ran an extremely repressive government; after Saddam's repression was removed (by the United States in 2003), the country devolved into an extremely violent civil war between Sunnis and Shi'ites. Collier observes that in ethnically diverse countries, often times a repressive dictator is the only thing holding the country together and preventing ethnic violence, so when repression decreases, violence explodes. Let's compare Syria (repressive) to Mubarak's Egypt (less repressive). In Egypt, protesters continued to take to the streets, growing in number until they ultimately succeeded in ousting Mubarak. Assad in Syria is in no such danger and no US intervention there would succeed because the state is so repressive that opposition is hopeless (much as it is in Iran and China as well, both also repressive regimes). Times Magazine writes on May 24th, "The capital of Syria has the illusion of calm. But do not trust appearances. In fact, trust is a very precious commodity in Damascus nowadays. The city, according to residents, is swarming with secret police. Nobody dares speak out against the government." [2] The article continues that Assad's killing of 1,000 protesters has quieted protests and dulled the movement, and anti-government activists believe "nothing will change." Compare the recent Jasmine revolution in Tunisian (un-repressive) compared to the success of the Green Revolution in Iran (repressive). The former succeeded and the latter failed. Sure sometimes extremely repressive regimes see small outbreaks of civil unrest, but repression prevents these outbreaks from spreading, makes them smaller than in less repressive regimes, and makes them less likely to begin in the first place. It is not my burden to show that there is NO civil disorder in more repressive regimes, just that there is less, which is quite easy. Singapore is one of the most peaceful countries in the world, but has a very strict authoritarian regime (caning people for spitting on the street and the death penalty for drug possession). Civil unrest is less likely in Singapore than the US, where riots after major sporting events routinely destroy property. It's pretty basic - the more afraid you are of what might happen, the less likely you are to go out there and protest or cause disturbances. ==Rebuttal== My opponent claims that people will rise up against repressive dictators because the dictator puts them in danger of nuclear war, or takes their money. Firstly, according to Paul Collier, authoritarian regimes have the lowest tax rates of any nations because with increased tax rates come increased demands for accountability. Also, many authoritarian regimes govern in regions where the economy is too informal to tax. In addition, there is no evidence provided that authoritarian regimes are any more likely to engage in nuclear war than democracies. In fact, democracies hold far more nuclear weapons today than do autocracies. And even when a regime endangers its country's survival, like Saddam Hussein's regime, under economic sanctions, which killed over a million people, people are still too afraid to rise up because if the regime is really repressive, the short term likelihood of dying from a bullet from the secret police outweighs the long term likelihood of dying from starvation. The Cultural Revolution in China For those that don't know, during the Cultural Revolution, Mao forced farmers to cultivate steel in their backyards instead of farming, resulting in millions of deaths. People were too afraid to disobey Mao's orders, even to feed their own families. Yes, of course there would be some backlash to the enslavement of an entire populace, but the unrest was surprisingly short lived given how horrible Mao's policies were. Maoist China actually proves that repression works in subduing a populace. No attempts to change China's form of government during Mao's time (or after) ever came remotely close to success. Syria My opponent must show that protests are getting larger and succeeding in Syria as a result of the repression. If the repression destroys the pro-democracy movement, that proves that civil unrest in less likely in repressive governments, when you compare the success of the Arab Spring in Syria to the other countries that have caught the democracy bug. Again, it's pretty basic. When people think that protesting the government might get them killed, they are less likely to do it than when they think that they are unlikely to get killed. Civil unrest is highest in un-repressive autocracies, anocracies, and democracies with weak governance and very little centralized authority. Meaning the stronger and more centralized the government, the more fear it can impose on its citizens for misbehaving, and thus the less likely civil disorder is, regardless of government type. [1] http://tinyurl.com... [2] http://news.yahoo.com...