Channeling Contention. Political Institutions and the Onset of Nonviolent Uprisings in Authoritarian Regimes
Year: 2015
Type: dissertation
Abstract: Why do we see such high levels of civil resistance in authoritarian regimes? Recent studies indicate that the vast majority of nonviolent uprisings take place in dictatorships (Chenoweth and Lewis 2013b; Chenoweth and Stephan 2011). An issue that has been offered scant attention in this debate is the considerable institutional diversity that exists among authoritarian regimes. This thesis sets off to explore this topic and clarify the effects of political institutions on nonviolent uprisings. Based on previous work on authoritarian institutions and survival, I identify the effects restrictions on political parties as a particularly fruitful subject for investigation. I argue that the level of restrictions on political parties in dictatorships serves as a key determinant of the opposition s willingness to pursue regime change through conventional channels of participation, as opposed to nonviolent direct action. This channeling effect is neither linear nor constant. Dictatorships face varying levels of opposition and differ in their ability to co-opt opposition. Moreover, dictatorships experience different patterns over time, depending on the type of institutions that are established. As such, authoritarian regimes should exhibit predictable differences in their ability to prevent nonviolent uprisings. Using data on nonviolent uprisings between 1973 and 2006, I run a series of logistic regression models to test these claims empirically. I explore the effects of three different levels of institutionalization - no parties, a single party or several parties - on the risk of a nonviolent uprising. I find that single-party regimes run a significantly higher risk of a nonviolent uprising than both no-party and multiparty autocracies, while no-party regimes and multiparty autocracies face virtually the same likelihood of an uprising. Furthermore, I find that the effect of regime duration is significantly higher in multiparty autocracies than in other autocracies. While the risk of an uprising decreases over time in no-party regimes, and remains fairly stable in single-party regimes, this risk increases significantly over time in multiparty autocracies. Thus, political institutions do appear to channel contention, but their ability to do so is highly conditional.\n\nErrata\n\nFootnote 5 on page 13 should read: Goldstone (2001: 142), for instance, defines revolutions as “effort[s] to transform the political institutions and the justifications for political authority in a society, accompanied by formal or informal mass mobilization and noninstitutionalized actions that undermine existing authorities.”\n\nThe following references cited in the text were omitted from the bibliography due to technical issues prior to publication:\n\nAnsell, Ben, and David Samuels. 2010. “Inequality and Democratization: A Contractarian Approach.” Comparative Political Studies 43(12): 1543-74.\nCarter, David B., and Curtis S. Signorino. 2010. “Back to the Future: Modeling Time Dependence in Binary Data.” Political Analysis 18(3): 271-292.\nRoss, Michael. 2013. “Oil and gas data, 1932-2011.” Available from: https://dataverse.harvard.edu/dataset.xhtml?persistentId=hdl:1902.1/20369 (Accessed January 30, 2015).\nUN Statistics. 2014. “National Accounts main aggregate database.” Available from: http://unstats.un.org/unsd/snaama/dnlList.asp (Accessed January 30, 2015).\nVan de Walle, Nicholas. 2006. “Tipping games: when do opposition parties coalesce?” In Electoral Authoritarianism: The Dynamics of Unfree Competition, ed. Andreas Schedler. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, p. 77–94.\nWorld Bank Group. 2012. “World Development Indicators 2012.” Available from: http://data.worldbank.org/data-catalog/world_development-indicators/ (Accessed January 30, 2015).\n\nA table referred to on page 58 was omitted from Appendix D.2. This table can be found by visiting the dropbox folder provided in Acknowledgments.
Author: Haakon H. Jernsletten
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2460612522