Exploring layers of repression: Systemic barriers to societal accountability

Abstract Over the last few years, anti-corruption studies have increasingly pointed to the need to complement top-down approaches and state controls with grassroots participation in the global struggle against political corruption. The rich set of bottom-up, non-institutional mechanisms to hold power accountable that derive from such efforts is generally summarized under the label “societal accountability.” However, when looking closely at this field of contention, one can easily spot different intertwined layers of repression, directly and indirectly hampering civic attempts to contrast state crimes. To date, few contributions have critically examined the systemic constraints that hinder the emergence and impact of societal accountability mechanisms, ranging from general constraints affecting the entire population to specific strategies targeting individual activists. Bridging together corruption, repression, accountability, and collective action studies, this article constitutes a first step toward delineating the multiple layers of repression that shape anti-corruption efforts across democratic and non-democratic contexts and reflects on how these layers can curtail efforts to intervene in the anti-corruption struggle from the grassroots.