Abstract
<p>Why does repression sometimes deter dissent but at other times generate terrorist backlash? Existing theories emphasise political opportunity, grievances, legitimacy and strategic interaction, but they do not fully explain when repression against dissent escalates into terrorist violence. I argue that backlash depends on the coercive mode through which state force is organised and interpreted. Coercion is more likely to deter when it remains proportionate, fair and predictable. Backlash becomes more likely when coercion creates two interconnected expectation gaps. The first is instrumental: compliance no longer appears sufficient to guarantee safety. The second is normative: the state violates its own claim to exercise force within bounded limits, signalling the exclusion of some groups rather than their protection. Under these conditions, excessive, arbitrary, indiscriminate or visibly disproportionate coercion weakens deterrence while intensifying grievance. It changes the moral ecology through which dissent is interpreted, making terrorist retaliation appear more strategically plausible or morally defensible.I test this argument using country-quarter event data from ACLED and GTD for 2018–2021. The results show that coercive military involvement in domestic security is associated with higher subsequent terrorist activity. The association follows a coercion-intensity gradient: excessive force and military protest repression are more strongly associated with subsequent terrorism than lower-intensity intervention or police-led repression. These findings hold across alternative controls, temporal diagnostics and balancing checks, but remain observational. They suggest that repression backfires not simply because it is forceful, but because some forms of coercion undermine the legitimacy and predictability on which deterrence depends.</p>