Fear often explains what appears to be political apathy in repressive societies. Citizens stay silent because dissent is risky; they avoid participation because the consequences can be severe. But fear does not fully explain the gradual withering of even low-risk forms of participation, like voting, civic organizing, public discussion, or modest expressions of disagreement.
A deeper problem is the erosion of collective agency.
By collective agency, I mean the shared belief that ordinary people can act together to influence outcomes and shape public life. It is akin to the concept of collective efficacy, which social psychologist Albert Bandura described as the belief that groups can exercise their power through coordinated action. Democracies depend on this belief, even when their institutions are imperfect. People participate not because they believe they will prevail, but because they believe that participation matters.
Expectations shape the possibility of action
Repression weakens the assumptions that undergird collective agency. Authoritarian systems do more than punish dissent. Over time, they erode expectations about what action can achieve. It becomes harder to imagine acting in defense of the public interest when elections appear predetermined, reforms never materialize, punishments follow protests, retaliation meets criticism, and the state blocks or absorbs civic initiatives. Isolated episodes accumulate over time to teach a broader lesson: Effort does not alter outcomes.
This matters because political participation is strongly linked to perceived efficacy. From the classic 1963 analysis The Civic Culture to later research on collective action, studies consistently show that people participate more when they believe their actions can influence outcomes.
This helps explain a pattern visible in many repressive and post-authoritarian contexts. People may withdraw because they no longer expect action to be consequential. Of course, people may initially disengage for practical reasons: to avoid risk, disappointment, or wasted energy, for instance. But over time, this withdrawal can begin to shape what people believe is possible.
Compliance is not consent
In the later years of the Soviet Union, commentators often mistook public compliance for consent. Yet analyses such as that by anthropologist Alexei Yurchak on late socialism suggest that much of this “compliance” reflected adaptation to constrained political possibility rather than genuine political belief. Official rituals continued; elections took place; public language toed the party line. But the sense that ordinary citizens could meaningfully shape political life had eroded.
Strong civic mobilization followed by prolonged repression results in a different but related pattern. Protests in Russia in 2011 and 2012 revealed significant collective agency. Yet the restrictions and prosecutions that followed may have accomplished more than deterring dissent. They may have weakened confidence that collective action can shape outcomes. In such circumstances, repression is not only a mechanism of fear but also a force that erodes political efficacy.
The same erosion can occur more quietly, without mass arrests or dramatic crackdowns. It may look like ordinary citizens beginning to say, “There is no point in voting,” “Nothing depends on us,” or “Why waste energy?”
Once members of a society broadly share this expectation of weakened collective agency, it can become self-reinforcing.
Nonparticipation starts to feel normal; disengagement becomes prudent; silence becomes common sense. At that point, repression is no longer imposed from above, by the state and its representatives. It has partly settled into the expectations of the population itself.
Collective agency is resilient, but must be nurtured and protected
Repression does not always produce passivity. In some contexts, it can provoke resistance, new solidarities, and alternative forms of mobilization. Whether repression erodes or catalyzes agency often depends on social trust, organizational capacity, and political opportunity. Poland’s Solidarity movement remains a powerful historical example of collective agency reemerging under authoritarian constraint. More recently, movements from Euromaidan to the 2020 pro-democracy protests in Belarus have demonstrated repression strengthening, rather than extinguishing, resolve. These examples do not minimize the danger posed by authoritarianism. Instead, they show that collective agency can survive even under repressive conditions—and that it therefore must be understood, protected, and rebuilt.
This is crucial for human rights work. Many analyses of shrinking civic space focus on laws, restrictions, arrests, and concrete risks. But prolonged repression also affects the psychological infrastructure of public life. It both constrains action and narrows what people imagine to be possible.
This is particularly relevant for human rights defenders. Front Line Defenders and other protection organizations have documented the frequency of threats, burnout, and psychosocial strain among human rights defenders, and many work through repeated setbacks, wins with limited visibility, and chronic uncertainty besides. These put pressure on collective agency itself.
When sustained effort appears disconnected from impact, exhaustion is at once physical, emotional, and political. The risk is not only fewer actions today but also a weakened belief in action tomorrow.
Relinquishing and rebuilding agency
Prolonged repression may do more than weaken participation. Citizens may begin to perceive agency as residing primarily in the state or the leader rather than in themselves and, in turn, become dependent on authority.
In his book The Fear of Freedom, social psychologist Erich Fromm described authoritarian attachment as a flight from the burdens of freedom. Political theorist Hannah Arendt, in her book The Origins of Totalitarianism, warned that domination works by damaging the human capacity for action. Understood through these insights, authoritarianism does not simply constrain civic life; it reshapes how people understand power and their relationship to it.
This raises the stakes of democratic renewal. Reopening civic space is not enough if citizens no longer believe themselves to be political actors. What must be rebuilt is agency. And agency requires credible institutions, meaningful opportunities for participation, and concrete experiences that reinforce the idea that actions can have consequences. It also requires treating psychosocial support and movement sustainability as central to democratic infrastructure.
Democracies survive not only through procedures but also through a shared expectation that ordinary people can shape public life. When that expectation erodes, repression damages both participation and the civic imagination.
Rebuilding that imagination is one of the hardest tasks that societies recovering from repression face. But it is among the most essential.