This article considers the conditions for protest mobilization and the creation of oppositional networks under authoritarianism. Archival data identifying membership in eighteen social action groups provide the basis for social network analysis of the opposition domain. Network development is traced during three phases of anti-Stalinist mobilization. The study finds that the opening of political opportunity in a non-democratic setting stimulates both civic association and contention. It is suggested that future research be conducted to identify the relational contents of ties in order to determine when influence in a network is likely to facilitate or to inhibit collective action.
Explores changes in the informal networks of overlapping memberships between opposition organizations in Poland between the 1960s and the 1980s. When civic organizations are subject to severe constraints, as in Communist regimes, informal networks are particularly important as alternative sources of resources. There, networks not only operate as micro‐mobilization contexts but also provide the basic infrastructure for civil society. The chapter explicitly takes the time dimension into account, using individual affiliations to chart the evolution of networks over time, and offering an accurate reconstruction of changes in the Polish political system and the emergence of a strong democratization movement.
This study analyzes twenty-four cases of occurrence/non-occurrence of mobilization in non-democratic states to determine conditions of political opportunity in high-risk authoritarian contexts. Ragin's (1987) Boolean method of qualitative comparison (QCA 3.0) is used to identify specific configurations of conditions that constitute political opportunity in non-democracies. We find that political opportunity is sensitive to conditions created by divided elites, changes in repression, media access, influential allies, and social networks. Our analysis identifies four configurations that create an opening for mobilization under authoritarian conditions. The key factors, identified by QCA in the most parsimonious model, are media access and social networks. These two factors are sufficient conditions for producing mobilization in non-democratic states.
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