🔒 Study Question and Context
This paper asks whether physical surveillance dampens or fuels anti-regime resistance. The dominant view argues surveillance suppresses dissent by giving regimes intelligence on networks and by instilling fear. Using newly declassified records from Communist Poland, the analysis shows a more complex picture: areas with secret police officers saw more street protests but fewer acts of sabotage.
📂 Newly Declassified Records and Measurement
- Previously secret police deployment records from Communist Poland are used to measure local exposure to secret police officers.
- Protest occurrence and sabotage events are drawn from contemporaneous archival sources.
🧭 Causal Identification Using 'Spy Priests'
- An instrumental variable approach is employed to establish causality.
- The instrument exploits the exogenous assignment of Catholic “spy priests” to local communities, which affected secret police presence but is plausibly unrelated to local protest propensity except through surveillance intensity.
🕵️♀️ What interviews and archives Reveal About Mechanisms
- Qualitative interviews and archival materials trace how surveillance shaped social dynamics.
- Evidence indicates widespread anger at pervasive monitoring and a stronger incentive for citizens to reveal their true loyalties, facilitating collective mobilization.
- Once mobilized, protesters deliberately avoided sabotage as a tactic, using public demonstrations to signal political (rather than criminal) motives to bystanders and authorities.
⚖️ Key Findings
- Communities exposed to secret police officers were more likely to organize protests.
- The same communities showed reduced levels of sabotage.
- The instrumental variable estimates support a causal interpretation of these relationships.
📌 Why It Matters
- Surveillance can simultaneously provoke public protest while altering the repertoire of contention—shifting action from covert sabotage to visible, political demonstrations.
- Results challenge simple assumptions that state surveillance only suppresses dissent and highlight how repression can reshape, not just reduce, opposition behavior.
