Freedom House Factors Determining the Use of Transnational Repression THREAT CAPACITY Regimes’ perception of the threat that exiles pose. Tools available to regimes for going after exiles. COST The cost to regimes of going after exiles. The combination of these three components determines “the likelihood of a regime’s use of counter-exile measures.” Adapted from The Frontier of Loyalty by Yossi Shain. Freedom House has chronicled 14 consecutive years of global authoritarian resurgence and democratic erosion.4 This report points to another way in which the two trends are intertwined. Transnational repression not only reinforces authoritarian rule in the origin countries, but also breaks down basic democratic protections in the victims’ host countries. Transnational repression emerges from three factors that Yossi Shain identified in his 1989 book The Frontier of Loyalty: A growing threat The risk of transnational repression has grown across all three of these factors. It is not new for states to pursue their political opponents across borders. The Soviet Union’s 1940 assassination of Leon Trotsky in Mexico is a classic example of transnational repression in the modern era. Libyan leader Mu’ammar al-Qadhafi’s international pursuit of “stray dogs,” as he referred to dissidents, spread fear among the exile community throughout his rule.5 But the risk of transnational repression has accelerated in the 21st century due to technological changes, cooperation between states against migrants, and erosion of international norms against extraterritorial violence. • a regime’s perception of the threat posed by exiles, • a regime’s available capacity for suppression, and • a regime’s cost-benefit calculations for using such coercive methods.6 First, the globalization of activism due to migration and digital communications has increased regimes’ perception of the threat that exiles pose. As widespread migration, remittances, and investment have embedded more countries in global networks, regimes face an “illiberal paradox”: they depend on an international order with relatively open flows of people, information, and capital, but they are also threatened by that openness.7 Digital technologies enable activists and journalists to participate in their country’s civic life from afar, freedomhouse.org 5