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States of all kinds repress dissent—both violent and non-violent protest. What are the effects of such repression? Much attention has been devoted to understanding whether repression increases or decreases dissent in general and whether repression of specific protest strategies, violent or non-violent, can induce dissidents to change tactics. Findings have been mixed, with support found for both the ideas that repression quells dissent and encourages it, and that when targeted at a specific kind of dissent, repression can make dissidents change tactics. 1 Although these existing works all focus on the importance of repression by the state, none look systematically at how this repression takes place. To date, studies of the effect of repression largely ignore the extreme variation in consistency with which states repress dissenters. States frequently respond in what appears to be an erratic fashion to dissidents …