Authoritarian regimes repress to prevent mass resistance to their rule. In doing so, regimes’ security forces require information about the dissidents who mobilize such resistance. Political competition, which fuels partisan rivalries, offers one solution to this problem by motivating civilians to provide needed information to security forces. Yet civilians share information about any political opponents, not just dissidents, which creates a challenge for regimes that want to target dissidents. Drawing on novel archival data from the immediate aftermath of the 1973 coup that brought Augusto Pinochet to power in Chile, a period that included civilian collaboration with repression, this article presents evidence that close pre-coup political competition is associated with more frequent repression and more targeting of non-dissidents. The author uses pre-coup democratic elections to measure political competition and addresses the challenge of estimating political preferences unaffected by repression. Qualitative evidence and further quantitative tests probe implications of the partisan rivalry mechanism and account for alternative explanations.

威权政权进行镇压是为了防止大规模抵抗他们的统治。在这样做时，政权的安全部队需要有关发动这种抵抗的持不同政见者的信息。助长党派竞争的政治竞争通过激励平民向安全部队提供所需信息，为这一问题提供了一种解决方案。然而，平民分享有关任何政治对手的信息，而不仅仅是持不同政见者，这给想要针对持不同政见者的政权带来了挑战。本文借鉴 1973 年政变后的新档案数据，该政变使奥古斯托·皮诺切特在智利掌权，这段时期包括平民与镇压的合作，本文提供的证据表明，政变前的密切政治竞争与更频繁的镇压和更多针对非持不同政见者。作者使用政变前的民主选举来衡量政治竞争，并解决估计不受镇压影响的政治偏好的挑战。定性证据和进一步的定量测试探讨了党派竞争机制的影响，并解释了其他解释。