Description
Research on authoritarian repression within diasporic populations has mostly focused to this point on the motivations for states to carry out transnational repression (TNR) against their dissidents abroad, on the nature and modalities of these repression operations, and on the effect of TNR on exiled activism. The reception and consequences of extraterritorial repression in dissent-hosting states ('receiving states') are yet to be explored. As one can expect that violent TNR would be perceived by receiving states as 'sending state'-sponsored agression, I ask in this paper whether transnational repression does indeed affect negatively the bilateral relations between sending and receiving states. Focusing on the particular case of 'liberal democratic' receiving states, I rely on archival research to explore two case studies involving exiled Iranian opposition residing in France, in the early 80's and in the early 90's. Contrary to my expectations, I find that the occurrence of violent state-sponsored repression operations on a host territory will not automatically cause a political response on the part of the receiving state, or a degradation of bilateral relations: TNR is only identified as state-sponsored and condemned as such if the perpetrating state is already framed as an 'evil' and 'oppressive' state in host state and liberal democratic narratives. In other words, it is not the occurrence of TNR that may cause bilateral tensions, but the occurrence of bilateral tensions that makes TNR identifiable and condemnable to host states.
