The Earl and Braithwaite layered model of repression integrates previously siloed areas into a larger study of Political Control, connecting research spanning a variety of disciplines (Sociology, Political Science, Communication), interdisciplinary fields (Law and Society, Internet Studies, Surveillance Studies), and various area studies (American studies, China studies).

Instead of treating the study of repression as beginning and ending with the direct surveillance and suppression of social movements, nonviolent resistance, and violent contention (e.g., civil wars, terrorism), the layered model of repression broadens the lens to examine how quiescence may be produced and maintained through political controls directed at entire societies and/or minoritized populations and operating through political institutions and/or civil society. This more comprehensive understanding of political control allows scholars to identify the broader strategies and tactics that governments and non-governmental authorities use to prevent, and lacking that, reduce or eliminate dissent. The layered model also highlights how activists and dissidents have countered these attempts at control.

By organizing and relating these literatures using the layered model under the umbrella of political control, this volume provides the most comprehensive and wholistic view of the context in which movements form, operate, and dissolve and the overall control complex movements face.