Taking to the Streets: Theory and Evidence on Protests under Authoritarianism

A.    Hypotheses

Political Dynamics

-          Mass mobilization

 Though mass protests are difficult to organize in authoritarian states, they are more successful in bringing down the regime if citizens manage to organize them despite high levels of government repression.

 The first mass protest within a very repressive authoritarian state has information-revealing potential in that it informs the population about the number of people who are sufficiently dissatisfied with the regime to risk severe reprisals. The first protest is never aimed at bringing down the regime; its aim is to solicit more people for follow-on protests.

-     The media

The media plays a role in the outcome of a regime once a protest occurs by informing the population about how many people gathered to protest. If the authoritarian government is able to silence the media or distort the information regarding the initial protest, citizens may be swayed against coming to the streets for subsequent protests.

B.     Article Summary

In their article, Magaloni, Livne and Kricheli present the results from their game theoretic signaling model, which tested how and when protests are likely to escalate into mass uprisings, using regime statistics from 1950-2000. Their results yielded the following theories:

1. The “first period of the game,” or the initial protest, serves only as an information revealing mechanism where protesters aim to signal their dissatisfactions with the regime to their fellow citizens. This is done to garner support and facilitate the overthrow of the regime in the “second period.” Unlike the first period, the second period serves as the mechanism for political change.

When a citizen protests for the first time, he signals to others the number of people dissatisfied with the regime and willing to take to the streets in future protests. In this stage, the protest does not aim to threaten the regime and has only a signaling function.

2. Protests in authoritarian regimes could have three different outcomes. The first possible outcome is that citizens stage a protest in the first period which then dies out due to the small number of participants or insufficient opposition to the dictator (e.g. Burma, 2007). In the second potential outcome, the first protest reaches a “critical mass,” or a sufficiently high number of protesters, and convinces citizens that political change is possible.  However, in this scenario, when they take to the streets again, the protest does not reach the magnitude necessary to topple the regime. In the third potential outcome, the first period protest reaches a critical mass and it also does so in the follow-on phase, thus ultimately succeeding in toppling the dictator (e.g. Eastern Europe, 1989).

The likelihood of these outcomes is also dependent on the reaction of the government. Whether the regime chooses to repress the protests or to allow them to go on will ultimately have an effect on the outcome.

3. Citizens are less likely to stage protests in highly repressive regimes because the transfer of information from one person to another is limited. Furthermore, the cost of opposing the regime is high, especially in regimes that punish even the slightest criticism of the dictator. Thus, highly authoritarian regimes are generally more stable due to their ability to deter civil opposition.

 4. However, if a protest does occur despite high levels of repression, it is more likely ultimately to succeed. Since the cost of protesting in a very repressive regime is high, (e.g. harassment, incarceration, death), a protest is less likely but has its maximum information revealing potential if it occurs. If citizens are willing to protest, despite the possible consequences, they signal to others their level of dissatisfaction thereby facilitating the future overthrow of the dictator.   

Repression is thus a double-edged sword for an authoritarian regime.  On one the hand, strong repression allows the regime to survive by intimidating and silencing citizens, and deterring opposition and civil acts of disobedience. On the other hand, even small acts of protest can ignite a mass uprising due to the information revealing potential of public protests in highly repressive regimes. If citizens are willing to protest despite significant risks, they send a powerful signal about the strength of anti-government sentiment and the possible weakness of the regime.

By contrast, if a regime is more tolerant of anti-government demonstrations, the protests do not have the same information revealing potential and tend to die out during negotiations with the government.

C.    Comment

Though the authors mention the possibility of varying levels of government reaction to protests, their model in fact assumes that the level of government repression is constant throughout the mass mobilization period. However, each regime differs in the way it responds to protests. Some increase coercion while others allow the protests to go on in the hope they will peter out. Creating a model that considers these possibilities and how they play into the outcomes of the protests may change the results that M, L+K came up with, and their theories.

It is interesting to apply these theories to the Arab Spring protests.    In the cases of Libya and --so far -- of Syria, the initial willingness of citizens to protest despite high levels of repression led to escalating subsequent rounds of follow-on protest, despite (and to a large extent because of) brutal regime repression. Based on the Magaloni-Yair-Kricheli model, therefore, the Assad regime should ultimately fall even without the benefit of foreign intervention, and it thus represents a test case for theory.

(Summarized by Tetyana Ivanishena on 1/18/2012)