Theory and Evidence on Protests under Authoritarianism

[nick_marcevich2]

In recent decades, citizens all over the world took to the streets to oppose predatory autocracies. In this paper, we examine both theoretically and empirically the conditions that facilitate civil uprisings against autocratic regimes and the determinants of their success. We ask why citizens opt to risk their lives and protest; what the resulting dynamics of civil protest is; and what are the conditions under which protest successfully leads to regime breakdown. To answer these questions, we first develop a game theoretic signaling model identifying when protests are likely to escalate into mass civil disobedience. We then generate two testable hypotheses from our theory: more repressive autocratic regimes are in principle more stable, in part because they are better able to deter civil opposition. However, protest that takes place in a more repressive autocratic regime reaches its maximum information revealing potential and hence is more likely to cascade into a successful uprising. We provide evidence in support of these two conclusions using data from contemporary regimes from 1950 − 2000.

http://iis-db.stanford.edu/pubs/23341/TakingToTheStreets_7-11-11.pdf

Очень любопытно и актуально, имхо. Сижу вот читаю. :)