9/03/2026
Dos nuevas publicaciones de Alejandro Peña
Qualitative Sociology - Government and Opposition
El profesor y director de los Posgrados en Estudios Internacionales, Alejandro Peña, ha publicado recientemente dos artículos: el artículo Political Activism and the Experience of Adversity (Qualitative Sociology, 2026); y el artículo From Collusion to Autonomy: Patterns of Hybrid Repression and Human Rights Activism (Government & Opposition, 2025).
Abstract del artículo Political Activism and the Experience of Adversity: How do political activists who live and work in high-risk contexts experience adversity? How do they make sense of the diverse institutional obstacles, strategic risks, and situational deprivations surrounding their work and lives? This article introduces the notion of relational adversity to capture how different adversarial factors in the diverse arenas activists inhabit intersect with and co-constitute each other. To validate and develop our framework, we analyze 160 narrative accounts of human rights activists in Colombia, Egypt, Kenya, and Mexico and examine concrete configurations and patterns of adversity found among different types of activists. By considering how structural constraints, institutional deficits, and opponent repression connect with the social location of individual activists, routine practices and personal concerns, and with their bodily and cognitive state, the article advances a relational and experiential treatment of political activism that complements structural and strategic approaches and does better justice to the lived reality of contentious mobilization.
Para visualizar el artículo, ver este enlace.
Abstract del artículo From Collusion to Autonomy: Patterns of Hybrid Repression and Human Rights Activism: This article elaborates the notion of hybrid repression, understanding by this modalities of dissidence suppression that involve state and non-state actors interacting in various ways, from fully autonomous to close cooperation. It does so by proposing a framework to scrutinize repressive configurations on the basis of three analytical dimensions – the perpetrator of repression, the tactics used and the threats perpetrators respond to – and using this framework to perform a systematic qualitative analysis of 160 in-depth interviews with human rights activists in four different countries (Colombia, Egypt, Mexico and Kenya). On this basis, the article analytically distinguishes and empirically elaborates four different patterns of hybrid repression, namely: state rogue, corporate, communitarian and non-state armed repression. Our argument challenges the state-centric approach to political repression that still dominates much of the literature on contentious politics and comparative regime analysis, and it invites further research on how hybrid forms of repression manifest and operate in different types of social and political contexts, and in relation to different areas of activism.
Para acceder el artículo, ver este enlace.
Abstract del artículo Political Activism and the Experience of Adversity: How do political activists who live and work in high-risk contexts experience adversity? How do they make sense of the diverse institutional obstacles, strategic risks, and situational deprivations surrounding their work and lives? This article introduces the notion of relational adversity to capture how different adversarial factors in the diverse arenas activists inhabit intersect with and co-constitute each other. To validate and develop our framework, we analyze 160 narrative accounts of human rights activists in Colombia, Egypt, Kenya, and Mexico and examine concrete configurations and patterns of adversity found among different types of activists. By considering how structural constraints, institutional deficits, and opponent repression connect with the social location of individual activists, routine practices and personal concerns, and with their bodily and cognitive state, the article advances a relational and experiential treatment of political activism that complements structural and strategic approaches and does better justice to the lived reality of contentious mobilization.
Para visualizar el artículo, ver este enlace.
Abstract del artículo From Collusion to Autonomy: Patterns of Hybrid Repression and Human Rights Activism: This article elaborates the notion of hybrid repression, understanding by this modalities of dissidence suppression that involve state and non-state actors interacting in various ways, from fully autonomous to close cooperation. It does so by proposing a framework to scrutinize repressive configurations on the basis of three analytical dimensions – the perpetrator of repression, the tactics used and the threats perpetrators respond to – and using this framework to perform a systematic qualitative analysis of 160 in-depth interviews with human rights activists in four different countries (Colombia, Egypt, Mexico and Kenya). On this basis, the article analytically distinguishes and empirically elaborates four different patterns of hybrid repression, namely: state rogue, corporate, communitarian and non-state armed repression. Our argument challenges the state-centric approach to political repression that still dominates much of the literature on contentious politics and comparative regime analysis, and it invites further research on how hybrid forms of repression manifest and operate in different types of social and political contexts, and in relation to different areas of activism.
Para acceder el artículo, ver este enlace.