How Do Liberalized Autocracies Repress Dissent? Evidence from Morocco

The Moroccan regime has used repression to successfully contain numerous types of opposition. Although research on its repressive policies is now extensive, impartial scholarly work that systematically examines its rational use of repression remains limited. This article addresses this gap by investigating the causal mechanisms behind the regime's repression of opposition actors between 1956 and 2018. Examining these mechanisms sheds light on the multilevel games between ruling actors andvopposition groups during various opposition events and shows that liberalization does not ensure the reduced use of repression. Rather, repression remains a strategic policy employed by the regime to pursue important political objectives such as maintaining power.

Political leadership and gendered multilevel games in foreign policy

Gender intersects as a major fault-line in increasingly polarized, contemporary global politics. Many democratic states in the global North and South have adopted pro-gender norms in their foreign policies, while other states and populist regimes have resisted the promotion of gender equality and women's rights. This article analyses how political leaders harness gender dynamics to further their power, status and authority to act in foreign policy. While scholarship on foreign policy analysis has emphasized the role of individuals, political leaders and their followers, and of two-level games balancing domestic and international pressures, we advance a novel theoretical concept: ‘gendered multilevel games’. This new concept highlights the gendered dynamics of the problem of agency and structure in foreign policy, which are generated from the interactions between the domestic, international and transnational levels, and reach within and across states. To illustrate the utility of this concept, we analyse foreign policy leadership and the variation in gendered multilevel games in four vignettes: (1) hyper-masculinity and revisionist leadership; (2) normative leadership and gendered nation-branding; (3) compassionate leadership and gendered transnational symbolism; and (4) contested leadership on pro- and anti-gender norms in foreign policy. Importantly, these empirical illustrations show how adept political leaders navigate pro- and anti-gender norms to achieve core and often divergent foreign policy goals.

FORMALIZATION OF MULTI-LEVEL GAMES

The article presents multilevel game theory, as a generalization of conventional single-level game theory as it has developed since von Neumann and Morgenstern (1944). We define a multilevel game structure, multilevel games, payoffs and distribution rules, upward feasible strategies and the solution concept multilevel Nash equilibrium (MNE) in such games. A MNE must be, for each player, a best reply against itself with respect to alternative strategies that may have other players deviate as well, in contrast to the NE for conventional games where simultaneous deviations by more than one player are not considered. Although every pure or mixed MNE must give the same outcome as a NE of the extensive form representation, a NE is not necessarily a MNE. It is shown that a MNE need not exist in pure or mixed strategies and, if it does, it may not be unique. In the former case, the multilevel structure is considered unmaintainable.

Achieving Cooperation under Anarchy: Strategies and Institutions

Cooperation and discord in world politics are explained to a considerable extent by the three factors discussed in the Introduction: mutuality of interest, the shadow of the future, and the number of players. Yet the context of interaction, perceptions, and strategies is also important. Issues are linked to one another through multilevel games, which may be compatible or incompatible. Whether reciprocity constitutes an effective strategy depends both on linkages among issues and on the institutions within which negotiations take place. Perceptions are always significant and often decisive. Decision makers often actively seek to change the contexts within which they act by linking issues, trying to alter others' perceptions, establishing institutions, and promoting new norms. This finding suggests the importance of linking the upward-looking theory of strategy with the downward-looking theory of regimes.