To a degree they are one and the same though. The government still requires the consent of the governed.
The looseness of the restrictions could kind of help because it gives people an outlet so it's not so bad they're ready to take up arms but the regime still has a ready cudgel to charge people with.
I am not saying that the government and the people are entirely the same, but I am saying that you can't just divorce them from one another.
This is decidedly untrue. Venezuela, North Korea, and many other counterexamples exist.
Repressive dictatorships do not require consent of the governed. They leverage their monopoly on violence and control. Quite literally, the first item on their agenda while forming is to disarm their populace.
This way, non-consensual governance is easier. No people demanding rights and freedoms, backed up by their ability to impose their will through force of arms. Put another way, they would be able to challenge the monopoly on violence that the (repressive) government holds.
Curiously, this is why the US bill of rights, is so important in guaranteeing freedom. The consent is given, up until the government decides to try to take rights away. Then consent is withdrawn.
government is violence (either actual or a credible threat of it). Application of violence doesn't require consent of the subjects of violence when the violence applying side is many orders of magnitude stronger than the subject.
