Mass protests and the resource curse: The politics of demobilization in rentier autocracies

Girod, Desha M.; Stewart, Megan; Walters, Meir R.

doi:10.1177/0738894216651826

Cited by 20 publications

(13 citation statements)

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“…Recent research supports this picture. Kirisci and Demirhan (2019) find that nonviolent campaigns become more likely to fail as a state's oil revenue increases, and Girod et al (2018) show that campaign demobilization in response to repression becomes increasingly likely as the state's resource revenues increase.…”

Section: Oil and Nonviolent Resistance Campaignsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Curving the resource curse: Negative effects of oil and gas revenue on nonviolent resistance campaign onset

Pinckney

2020

Research & Politics

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There is growing consensus that large oil and gas revenues in autocracies have multiple pernicious effects, from decreasing democratization to increasing armed conflict: the so-called “resource curse.” Yet we know little about the effects of oil and gas revenue on the onset of major nonviolent dissent. The logic of the resource curse would lead us to expect oil and gas revenue to significantly decrease the likelihood of nonviolent resistance, as resource wealth enables autocracies to increase repressive capacity and co-opt potential challengers. But this relationship has yet to be comprehensively tested. I show that such an effect obtains, but is more complex than previously theorized. Low levels of oil and gas revenue increase the likelihood of nonviolent resistance onset, while high levels decrease it. Despite popular assumptions and the general logic of the resource curse, oil only appears to drown out major nonviolent dissent at relatively high levels.

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Section: Oil and Nonviolent Resistance Campaignsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Curving the resource curse: Negative effects of oil and gas revenue on nonviolent resistance campaign onset

Pinckney

2020

Research & Politics

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“…Moreover, governments' repressive capabilities tend to be more intense and effective in oil-rich autocratic regimes because they can invest more heavily in remaining in power to continue to reap the lucrative oil income (Girod, Stewart, & Walters, 2016). In addition, such countries receive more international support when they use repression because foreign countries that depend on the oil extracted from the repressive regime generally support the regimes to keep the oil flowing (Girod et al, 2016).…”

Section: The Effects Of Repressionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Demobilization of Protest Campaigns

Demirel-Pegg¹

2017

Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics

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All protest campaigns move through cycles of escalation and de-escalation and ultimately demobilize. Some campaigns demobilize quickly as protesters reach their goals. The 2011 Egyptian uprising, when protesters left the streets after they brought down the Mubarak regime, for example, is a case of rapid demobilization. Others, like the 2011 uprising in Bahrain, demobilize over a longer time span before protests come to a complete halt. In Bahrain, the government first cracked down on the opposition by bringing in foreign troops and then continued to repress protesters until the protesters ended the campaign in 2012. Regardless of the length of time it takes for protesters to leave the streets and stop the protests, demobilization is a complex process. Numerous factors, such as severe repression, government concessions, countermobilization of opposition groups, leadership changes, or even unexpected events, can all bring about demobilization. These factors and strategies may occur simultaneously or sequentially, but usually one or a combination of them lead to the demobilization of a protest campaign. Moreover, demobilization is a dynamic process, as it continues to evolve out of the endogenous interactions among governments, challengers, bystanders, and, in some cases, as in Bahrain, external third-party actors. Even though every protest campaign eventually demobilizes one way or another, the demobilization phase has generally attracted less scholarly attention than the onset and escalation of violent and nonviolent forms of collective action. For a long time, most scholars addressed demobilization indirectly within the context of the repression-dissent nexus as they explored why repression backfires and escalates dissent in some cases, while it succeeds in demobilizing the opposition in others. Nonetheless, factors besides state repression contribute to the demobilization of dissent. In other words, a state’s accommodative tactics, as well as individual, organizational, or even regional and systemic factors that interact with the state’s actions, have the potential to shape when and how political dissent demobilizes. More recently, scholars have begun to examine why and how protest campaigns demobilize by stepping out of the repression-dissent nexus and focusing on a variety of other factors related to organizational structures, regime types, individual-level constraints, and contingent events that affect the trajectory of campaigns. At the same time, recent studies on state repression have also begun to focus more heavily on the different causal mechanisms that explain how a state’s repressive tactics can lead to demobilization. While this new line of research has made significant contributions to our understanding of the demobilization of protests, we are still left with important questions about the demobilization process that have yet to be answered.

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“…For example, Shen-Bayh (2018) looks at the strategies of repression and co-optation autocrats adopt to quell opposition. Girod et al (2018) examine how the income sources of autocratic regimes influence their survival, while Knutsen and Rasmussen (2017) illustrate how the type of welfare state and social assistance programmes autocracies provide to citizens affect overall satisfaction with the regime, which, in turn, influences the stability of these regimes. Finally, Schmotz and Tansey (2018) look at the importance of regional and international linkages autocrats foster to solidify their power.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Economic development: How does it influence the survival of different types of autocracy?

Stockemer

Kailitz

2020

International Political Science Review

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Modernization theory is one of the most influential theories in political science. However, to date, studies testing the impact of modernization on political regimes have almost completely focused on democracies. We aim at broadening the discussion to autocracies and ask the following research question: What impact has economic development on the survival of different types of autocracy? Using data covering 1946 to 2016, we ascertain – mainly through logistic regression analysis – that the level of economic development affects not only the endurance of democracies but also that of various types of autocracy. In more detail, we find that economic development prolongs the survival of ideocracies and personalist autocracies. The effect of economic modernization on military dictatorships, monarchies and electoral autocracies is very limited. In contrast, one party autocracies are the only regime type whose survival chances (moderately) decrease with modernization.

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Mass protests and the resource curse: The politics of demobilization in rentier autocracies

Cited by 20 publications

References 80 publications

Curving the resource curse: Negative effects of oil and gas revenue on nonviolent resistance campaign onset

Curving the resource curse: Negative effects of oil and gas revenue on nonviolent resistance campaign onset

The Demobilization of Protest Campaigns

Economic development: How does it influence the survival of different types of autocracy?

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