State Concessions and Protest Mobilization in Authoritarian Regimes

Abstract

Autocrats typically respond with coercion when citizens take to the streets demanding political reform. Sometimes, however, they tolerate mass protests and even give in to protesters’ demands. While the effect of coercion on mobilization is well-studied, we know less about the role of concession-making. We argue that accommodating demands is rarely an effective strategy in demobilizing opposition movements. Authoritarian rulers are usually neither willing nor able to fully address protesters’ dynamic demands, nor can they offer credible commitments. We conduct a quantitative analysis using multiple cross-national data sets to empirically assess the relationship between concessions by the government and subsequent mass mobilization. By analyzing protest events in temporal and spatial proximity, we estimate the effect of making concessions on protest mobilization at the subnational level in 18 autocracies from 1991 to 2012. Our results indicate that concessions are associated with a significant and substantive increase in subsequent protest activity.

How to Contain Hybrid Regime's Power: A Conceptual Framework for Extracting Regime Concessions

“…The empirical evidence, derived from six instances of social mobilization in Serbia over the recent few years, run by the "Move, Change" movement, validates these propositions and underscores the utility of the framework in predicting the outcomes of campaigns of authoritarian resistance, making it a valuable tool for understanding the nexus of authoritarian resilience vs democratic resistance which has been attracting growing interest as of late. Consequently, these insights add to the research probing government reactions to mobilization requests and pressures (Chenoweth et al 2017;Handlin 2017;Klein and Regan 2018;Ozen and Dogu 2020;Merkel and Lührmann 2021;Sinkkonen 2021;Spasojević and Lončar 2022;de Vogel 2023;van Lit et al 2023;Tomini et al 2023;Leuschner and Hellmeier 2023). Specifically, it contributes to the ongoing endeavours to discern the circumstances under which governments yield to such pressures and when they resist.…”

“…Nonetheless, hybrid regimes sometimes make concessions to social campaigns, primarily in order, to prevent the erosion of their legitimacy (Heurlin 2016;Li 2019;Ozen and Dogu, 2020;Trantidis 2022;Leuschner and Hellmeier 2023;de Vogel 2023;Spasojević andLončar 2023, p. 1384;). This holds true even in authoritarian regimes that lack free elections (see, e.g., O'Brien and Li 2006;Acemoglu and Robinson 2006;Bindman 2015;Bishara 2015;Yuen and Cheng 2017); the need to avoid popular backlash and prevent the erosion of legitimacy is even more pronounced in semi-authoritarian regimes, which, despite limited media and political freedoms, still rely on electoral legitimation (Levitsky and Way, 2010;Bermeo, 2016;Trantidis 2022;Spasojević andLončar 2023, p. 1385).…”

“…How to contain a regime's abuse of power remains a key challenge for social movements in hybrid regimes, elsewhere called regimes of competitive authoritarianism (Levitsky and Way 2002). Comparatively, we could see various instances across semi-authoritarian regimes where social and political actors attempt to mobilize and hinder harmful actions of the government, but such attempts often prove ineffective (Heurlin 2016, Huang et al 2016VonDoepp 2020, p.861;Sinkkonen 2021;Spasojević and Lončar 2023;Leuschner and Hellmeier 2023). Although they do not apply brutal repression as authoritarian regimes do (Davenport 1999;Levtisky and Way 2002, p. 53;Carey 2006;Ghandi and Przeworski 2007;Bánkuti et al 2012;Bermeo, 2016;Galston, 2018;Levitsky and Ziblatt, 2019;Reny 2021;Trantidis 2022, p. 115-116;Spasojević andLončar 2023, p. 1386), hybrid regimes nonetheless have at their disposal an entire array of measures and techniques that they can use effectively to counter attempts at resistance to abuse of power (Schedler 2006, p. 3;Tilly 2010;Handlin 2017), ranging from manipulation and media censorship, through the cooptation of 'opposers', often funded through abuse of public resources, to intimidation and less overt forms of repression (Greshewski 2015;Sika 2019;Amon et al 2020;Spasojević andLončar 2023: van Lit et al 2023, p.6, 8).…”