2 - The Repression Playbook

Summary

Chapter Two lays out the justifications, concepts and theories for the study. There are four key issues. Firstly, regime type analysis of repression yields unsatisfying results. Secondly, Bahrain exhibits many characteristics that make it an interesting case study, such as the Al Khalifa regime and its reliance on foreign powers.Thirdly, studies of repression are often quantitative, and attempts to build generalisable causal models have reached often divergent conclusions, emphasising the need for fine-grained approaches such as historical ones. Fourth, there is a lack of nuanced conceptualisations of repression, and this book proposes a new one, ideally positioned to create a rich net for studying repression. In other words, this chapter explores what types of repression there are, and asks how can we apply them to study Bahrain?