Protest trajectories in electoral authoritarianism: from Russia’s “For Fair Elections” movement to Alexei Navalny’s presidential campaign

Dollbaum, Jan Matti

doi:10.1080/1060586x.2020.1750275

Cited by 33 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 52 publications

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“…On the national level, protest event analysis can be used to identify "extraordinary times," periods of high protest activity that are the most likely to provoke a reaction from political authorities and are thus important when studying regime dynamics. The MMAD data may be best suited for this research interest: They identify the fewest events overall, but they clearly mark the protest wave of 2011-2012 (including its regional component), which arguably had the greatest effect on Russian politics of all protest periods in post-Soviet history (Dollbaum, 2020b;Greene & Robertson, 2019). The fact that MMAD spikes in 2011-2012 and thus clearly delineates the FFE period is, as comparison with LAruPED has shown, in part the result of more events crossing the 25-participant threshold.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Protest Event Analysis Under Conditions of Limited Press Freedom: Comparing Data Sources

Dollbaum

2021

MaC

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The investigation of long-term trends in contentious politics relies heavily on protest event analysis based on newspaper reports. This tends to be problematic in restricted media environments. To mitigate the effects of bias and (self-)censorship, researchers of protest in authoritarian regimes have experimented with other sources such as international media and dissident websites. However, even though classical news media are easier targets for repression, journalistic reports might still outperform other sources regarding the quality of information provided. Although these advantages and disadvantages are known in the literature, different types of sources have seldom been tested against each other in an authoritarian context. Using the example of Russia between 2007 and 2012, the present article systematically compares protest event data from English-language news agencies, dissident websites, and several local sources, first and foremost with a view to improving methodological knowledge. The analysis addresses broad trends across time and space as well as the coverage of specific regions and single protest events. It finds that although the data sources paint different pictures of protest in Russia, this divergence is systematic and can be put to productive use. The article closes with a discussion on how its findings can be applied in other contexts.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Protest Event Analysis Under Conditions of Limited Press Freedom: Comparing Data Sources

Dollbaum

2021

MaC

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“…In the studied cases, there is tentative evidence that the early organization building observed in Perm and Saratov indeed stimulated an abeyance process that was absent in the other two cities. For instance, when the liberal opposition politician Aleksey Navalny conducted his country-wide presidential campaign in 2017-2018, in Perm his campaign office was operated by several activists who had begun their activism in connection to Perm's Council (Dollbaum 2020). In Saratov, an indirect result of the early organization building was the emergence of a new local media source that developed into a new center of liberal activism which supplied Navalny's activists with judicial help and media coverage.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

When Does Diffusing Protest Lead to Local Organization Building? Evidence from a Comparative Subnational Study of Russia’s “For Fair Elections” Movement

Dollbaum¹

2020

Perspect. polit.

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Under what conditions do nation-wide mass protests in authoritarian regimes produce new local activist organizations? Based on sixty-five interviews and over 1,000 media reports, internal documents, and social media posts, I compare the organization-building process in the “For Fair Elections” (FFE) protests of 2011–2012 across four Russian regions. I argue that mass protests are more likely to leave behind new social movement organizations (SMOs) when the local and the national interact, i.e., when long-standing activists on the ground perceive an opportunity to use the protests for their ongoing local struggles. Where new SMOs are established, their composition, activity pattern, and inner structure follow the tactical and organizational repertoires of veteran activists that were shaped by their local political environments. This argument illuminates the functioning of electoral authoritarian regimes from a subnational perspective and identifies conditions under which a bottom-up challenge to an authoritarian political system can drive local civil society development.

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“…We evaluate our hypotheses within the context of COPE about Russian governmental corruption. Corruption has become the major political issue about which the political opposition, led by jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny, has mobilized around for the past several years (Dollbaum, 2020). The cycle of COPE and digital repression has continued with additional online and offline anti-corruption protests throughout Russia during Winter and Spring 2021 that were inspired by the release of an online anti-corruption documentary about President Putin’s “palace” (Dixon, 2021).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Signaling silence: Affective and cognitive responses to risks of online activism about corruption in an authoritarian context

Dal

Nisbet²,

Kamenchuk

2022

New Media & Society

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Networked authoritarian governments’ use of digital repression creates uncertainty and amplifies risk signals for ordinary citizens using social media for political expression. Employing theoretical frameworks from the risk and decision-making literature, we experimentally examine how citizens perceive and respond to the risks of low-effort forms of online activism in an authoritarian context. Our online field experiment demonstrates that emotional responses to the regime’s risk signals about online activism drive decision-making about contentious online political expression as compared with cognitive appraisal of risk. Moreover, the relationship between anticipatory emotions and contentious online political expression varies significantly depending on individuals’ involvement with the controversial topic of expression. We discuss the importance of emotions and citizen risk judgments for understanding online activism within networked authoritarian contexts.

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Protest trajectories in electoral authoritarianism: from Russia’s “For Fair Elections” movement to Alexei Navalny’s presidential campaign

Cited by 33 publications

References 52 publications

Protest Event Analysis Under Conditions of Limited Press Freedom: Comparing Data Sources

Protest Event Analysis Under Conditions of Limited Press Freedom: Comparing Data Sources

When Does Diffusing Protest Lead to Local Organization Building? Evidence from a Comparative Subnational Study of Russia’s “For Fair Elections” Movement

Signaling silence: Affective and cognitive responses to risks of online activism about corruption in an authoritarian context

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