Existing research suggests that external interventions may reduce the aggregate levels of
repression in authoritarian regimes by pressuring recalcitrant national governments to comply
with transnational rules. This article argues that transnational institutions may not only have
corrective but also generative impact on authoritarian repression by shaping the cultural rules
and organizational models that fashion the forms of repression in specific governance domains.
The argument is grounded in an analysis of the transformation of repression against AIDS
activism in China from 1989 to 2013. While the intervention of transnational AIDS institutions
constrained the operation of traditional violent coercion, it mobilized and enabled Chinese government
organizations to generate new repressive actors with innovative repertoires of covert
and indirect strategies at both the transnational and domestic levels. Thus, external interventions
must be considered as a multiple dimensional process, and its outcome is produced
through interactions between transnational institutions and domestic organizations engaging
in repressive acts.
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