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Why do governments in Africa repress certain contentious challenges but not others? This presentation adopts a blended approach to studying repression by taking seriously both the characteristics of contentious events as well as the nature of the regime in power. Salehyan and Hendrix will argue that the more threatening a movement is — as measured by the use of violence, opposition demands and targets — the more likely the state is to use repressive force. They will also, however, relax the assumption that the state is a unitary actor, and allow for the preferences of state leaders and of the security forces to diverge when it comes to carrying out repressive policies.