GOING AFTER THE FAMILY 3 THEORIZING PROXY PUNISHMENT IN THE AGE OF GLOBALIZED AUTHORITARIANISM In an era of accelerated globalization, diasporas frequently mobilize across state borders to promote change from afar. Benefitting from internet-facilitated connectivity, rapid information flows, cheap cross-border travel, and the international human rights regime (Keck & Sikkink, 1998), diaspora activists foment international pressure against repressive rulers, undermine authoritarian censorship, and channel support to their allies at home (e.g., Adamson, 2002; Brinkerhoff, 2009; Shain & Barth, 2003; Tarrow, 2005). These entrepreneurs build on their ‘in-between-advantage’ (Brinkerhoff, 2016) as outsiders with access to international powerholders and insiders with homeland contacts, loyalties, and language skills (Ayoub, 2016). Accordingly, diasporas can broker between social worlds, becoming transnational players in conflicts between authoritarian regimes and domestic opponents. Yet, it is precisely because of activists’ potential to challenge authoritarian rulers that diasporas are subjected to the ‘long arm’ of authoritarian states (Tsourapas, 2020). Regimes counter-mobilize against dissidents abroad through transnational repression, which includes surveillance, threats, and the use of violence (Cooley & Heathershaw, 2017; Lewis, 2015; Michaelsen, 2020; Moss, 2016; Öztürk & Tas, 2020). From Napoleonic France to fascist Italy and the Soviet Union, illiberal regimes have long tracked and assassinated their opponents overseas (Shain, 2005). However, transnational repression has since evolved significantly in scope and intensity along with technological changes, global connectivity, and entangled security practices (Adamson & Greenhill, 2021; Murakami Wood, 2012). Since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, regional alliances and security cooperation agreements between states have facilitated the capture of lawful dissidents in the name of so-called war on terror. Regimes exploit the International Criminal Police Organization (INTERPOL), using it to unlawfully apprehend and extradite political opponents, asylum seekers, and refugees (Cooley, 2015; Lemon, 2019; de Goede & Sullivan, 2015). The proliferation of surveillance technology has further stimulated these practices. Largely unrestrained by export controls and independent oversight, opaque private industries furnish regimes with spyware, such as the Israeli NSO Group’s Pegasus surveillance tool, which penetrates smartphones to track activists like Jamal Khashoggi and eavesdrop on their communications (Bergman & Kingsley, 2021; Deibert, 2020). Proxy punishment is an important, but distinct, method in the transnational toolkit. Rather than relying on the extraterritorial application of violence, this method applies violence within regimes’ territorial jurisdictions as an indirect means to coerce the diaspora. By directing repression towards diaspora members’ close contacts—most often their family members—at home, regimes use proxy punishment to indirectly punish those who remain out of reach. Doing so is far cheaper than attempting to reach activists who are protected by the institutions and security apparatuses of other states. Keeping violence within the borders of a regimes’ sovereign territories also makes it easier for state actors to avoid international condemnation and sanctions, as were incurred by the Saudi monarchy after the 2018 killing of Khashoggi in Turkey. Today, proxy punishment reflects both newer and enduring styles of authoritarian repression. While exemplifying the age-old practice of collective retribution on the one hand, proxy punishment signifies the adaptation and extension of domestic repression into the contemporary, transnational arena of contentious politics (Tarrow, 2005). Newer technologies enable regimes to monitor and surveil diaspora communities with relative ease. It is through this diaspora activists’ efforts to publicly ‘name and shame’ regimes on internet-based platforms and through their communications with colleagues and contacts that regimes become alerted to the identities, whereabouts, and actions of their opponents. While this practice occurred well before the rise of commercial air travel, cheap phone calls (Vertovec, 2004), or the internet and social media, it is these fruits of globalization that make proxy punishment ever easier and swifter to deploy against civilians in sending states. At the same time, this method reflects a longstanding feature of dictatorships (Alexopoulos, 2008; Moore, 1978), namely, the ‘simple and ingenious device of ‘“guilt by association”’ to render a population susceptible to manipulation and subjugation (Arendt, 1979, p. 323). In societies conditioned by surveillance and fear, subjects tend to avoid