Tag Archives: repressive regimes

The fourteenth presentation at the Fletcher Summer Institute (FSI) for the Advanced Study of Nonviolent Conflict focused on movements and elections. The talk was given by none other than Professor Doug McAdam from Stanford University. I’m a big fan McAdam’s research and have cited his work in my dissertation research.

What is absolutely stunning in the social movement literature is the almost complete lack of reference to the role of elections. Likewise, the literature on elections virtually ignores the role of social movements. These academic silos reminded of my dissertation proposal in which I note that the nonviolent civil resistance virtually ignores the role of communication technology.

There are five dynamic links between social movements and elections:

• Elections as a social movement tactic
• Proactive electoral mobilization
• Reactive electoral mobilization
• Elections shaping the longer-term waxing and waning of movement fortunes
• Party polarization via social movement pressures

The standard explanation for social movement mobilization, known as political process theory (PPT), emphasizes the role of political opportunities, mobilizing structures, and framing processes, along with protest cycles and contentious repertoires. Movements can use an electoral strategy to manage political transitions. Social movements can also become part of important coalitions in the election process.

One of the most brilliant campaign strategies, according to McAdam, is Freedom Summer in 1964.

“This was a campaign in Mississippi launched to register as many African American voters as possible, which up to that time had almost totally excluded black voters. The project was organized by the Council of Federated Organizations (COFO), a coalition of four established civil rights organizations: the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), with SNCC playing the lead role.”

One participant noted that at times social movements (e.g., indigenous movements in Mexico and Guatemala) explicitly boycotts elections or at the very least deliberately do not place any importance in the electoral process. I don’t think this necessarily contradicts McAdam’s point, those indigenous movements did have a strategy—one of non-engagement.

The way I see it, elections are critical processes in any case. As McAdam explains, “elections do create a moment when mobilization is more or less legitimate, they provide a cover.” More fundamentally, I would crystallize the importance of elections around the notion of predictability. In other words, elections are scheduled events and provide an anchor around which resistance movements can plan and prepare for.

Patrick Philippe Meier

The thirteenth presentation at the Fletcher Summer Institute (FSI) for the Advanced Study of Nonviolent Conflict focused on international efforts to assist, defend and advance democratic development. The talk also focused on the strategies implemented by repressive regimes to prevent uprisings.

There are a number of issues that arise in democratic assistance:

• Is supporting democratic parties in advance of elections assistance or intervention?
• Fine line between democracy promotion and “picking sides”
• Difficult to identify who the democrats are
• Risk of futility: lost causes
• Risk of misuse of aid by corrupt and sincere actors; need to monitor.
• Risk of supporting Western-oriented NGOs to the exclusion of more authentic groups.
• Where does the initiative come from, the donor or the recipient?

The Color Revolutions

There are several well known successes in civil resistance movements. But to really understand what makes movements successful requires that we clearly understand why some movements failed, such as Burma 1990, Belarus 2006, Zimbabwe 2008. Iran is as yet undetermined.

There are some external conditions facilitating color revolutions:

• Democratic leverage: susceptibility to Western/democratic pressure as a result of economic or security ties.
• Relative lack of reciprocal leverage on West.
• Linkages: economic, geopolitical, social, communication and transnational civil societies.

Linkages make repression more costly by:

• Heightening Western attention and stakes.
• Increasing the prospect that Western governments will impose costs.
• Creating democratic constituencies with a stake in democratic reform.
• Strengthening demo actors in relation to autocrats.

The authoritarian backlash: Authoritarian learning. These regimes do the following:

• Preempt the favorable conditions for mass mobilization to bring about democratic change.
• Study and learn from other successful color revolutions. They have thus developed a number of counter-strategies.
• Restrict alternative political space more aggresively.
• Foment divisions among the political opposition.
• Forbid/criminalize the receipt of international grants by independent media and NGOs. This has placed a devastating role.
• Sever international democratic ties.
• Forbid international observation of elections.
• Forbid or harass domestic election monitoring.
• Shut down mobile networks, SMS, post-election, as crisis builds.
• Preemptively seize control of public spaces, block access for mass ralies; utilize force early and brutally.
• Redeploy security forces to ensure loyalty.
• Import and deploy powerful Internet monitoring and filtration systems.
• Borrowing and cooperation among authoritarian regimes.

Iran Conditions

There are favorable conditions and still some space for political pluralism. There are high levels of information and education. There is some unification of opposition. There are regime splits, unpopular incumbent. Extensive capacity is using new technologies.

There are however unfavorable conditions. Lack of a parallel vote tabulation to “prove” election fraud. Regime control of security forces so far. The regime is has the technical skill and capacity to monitor and block information. There is little Western leverage.

Tipping factors in Iran include:

• Courage, commitment, strategy of opposition leadership
• Opposition ability to craft and sustain campaign of non-violent civil resistance, vs “returning to normal”
• Further regime splits: where will the clerifcal establishment (Qom) and various security branches come down?
• Battle of information technology between regime and opposition: repression or evasion? Liberation technology: increasing use of Internet, cell phones, SMS and new social media?

Patrick Philippe Meier

The seventh presentation at the Fletcher Summer Institute (FSI) for the Advanced Study of Nonviolent Conflict focused on the economic vulnerabilities of different authoritarian states.

There are different types of repressive states:

• Development state
  • Developmental ideology
  • Mixed economy with interventionist state
  • Constrained but partially autonomous civil society

• Totalitarian state
  • Development ideology
  • State ownership of means of production
  • Mobilized but non-autonomous civil society

• Rentier state
  • Lack of development ideology
  • State as arena for private gain
  • Disorganized civil society

The pillars of regime survival include legitimacy, political support and coercion. Each of these exist at different levels in the three types of state described above. For example, in rentier states have low legitimacy, narrow political support and high coercion.

How do states generate economic revenues?

• Direct sources
  • Taxes
  • State ownership of production
  • Rents (natural resources, foreign aid, corruption, etc)

• Indirect sources
  • Domestic and/or foreign private investment
  • Migrant remittances

One participant noted the important role of organized crime, which is missing from the framework presented. I completely agree with this comment. We’ve seen the rise in organized crime in Mexico, Colombia, Guinea Bissau and Liberia, among other countries.

What are the implications for the social contract? What sources of income require broad, narrow and little/no domestic collaboration?

• Broad domestic collaboration
  • Taxes
  • Competitive private investment

• Narrow domestic collaboration
  • Political corruption
  • State owned enterprises
  • Monopolistic private investment

• No domestic collaboration
  • Natural resource rents
  • Foreign aid
  • Migrant remittances

States rely on these types of revenues to various degrees. For example, development states are highly dependent on private investment; totalitarian states rely most heavily on state ownership; and rentier states have relatively high dependence on rents. States use these revenues to create legitimacy, build political coalitions and bolster the military, for example.

Economic factors can affect thresholds at which citizens join democratic opposition. To be sure, minor changes in individual thresholds can unleash explosive growth in public opposition. I was surprised that the notion of “information cascades” was not included in the presentation. Nor was the idea of the “dictator’s dilemma,” which I addressed in this previous post.

In any case, here’s an excerpt from a paper by Professor Dan Drezner that explains information cascades:

“An informational cascade takes place when individuals acting in conditions of uncertainty strongly condition their choices on what others have done previously.  More formally, an information cascade is a situation in which every actor, based on the observations of others, makes the same choice independent of his/her private information signal.

In repressive societies, information cascades often lead citizens to acquiesce to government coercion, even if a broad swath of the public would prefer coordinated action.  Citizen coordination and mobilization  is highly unlikely among risk-averse actors unless there is some assurance that others will behave similarly.  At the same time, however, an exogenous shock that triggers spontaneous acts of protest can also trigger a reverse in the cascade.  This explains why repressive societies often appear stable and yet without warning can face a massive scaling up of protests and civic action.

A little bit of public information can reverse a long-standing informational cascade that contributed to citizen quiescence.  Even if people may have previously chosen one action, seemingly little information can induce the same people to choose the exact opposite action in response to a slight increase in information. The spread information technology increases the fragility of information cascades that sustain the appearance of authoritarian control.”

In terms of strategies for activists:

• Identify the regime’s points of economic vulnerability on the revenue and expenditure side;
• Seek to lower individual thresholds by raising the costs of coercion for the regime while de-legitimizing the regime;
• Construct appropriate strategic alliances.

How does one engage in nonviolent conflict in rentier states? How does expand the nonviolent battlefield? There are two levels of analysis here: local/national and international. However, the international component is not a replacement for activities going on at the grassroots level.

In the case of Timor-Leste‘s nonviolent action, international actors were able to help support the cause. But if the political transition turned violent, then the international community would not be able to publicly support their cause.

Another strategy is to go after multinational companies operating in repressive regimes. Exposing the complicity of their business in these countries, which regimes depend on, is one way exploit some of their existing vulnerabilities.

An interesting example, along these lines, is the Genocide Intervention Network ‘s (GIN) ranking system DarfurScores.org that grades Members of Congress on how well they’ve been addressing the genocide via legislation. This was presented last month by the head of GIN. Many congress persons got in touch with GIN to ask how they could increase their Darfur scores.

Another interesting example is Karma Bank.

Patrick Philippe Meier

My former Professor Richard Shultz gave the fourth presentation at the Fletcher Summer Institute (FSI) for the Advanced Study of Nonviolent Conflict 2009.

Shultz placed his presentation into context by noting that he has radically changed his syllabi and created new courses in order reflect the changing global security. While security traditionally focused on armed groups, we are now focusing increasingly on non-state armed groups and more recently on non-state non-armed groups. Furthermore, violence is a subset of force. In other words, nonviolence is another force that needs to be studied within the context of failed states and civil resistance.

Authority, according to Professor Shultz is based on two characteristics: legitimacy and coercion. He addressed these within the context of strong states and weak states on the one hand and strong societies and weak societies on the other.

There are two types of strong states: those based on strong institutions of coercion not restricted by law; versus those in which the population grants or agrees that the government needs strong institutions of coercion and extraordinary powers. Whether a society is strong or weak depends on how legitimate they view the state. This produces a framework with 4 quadrants or cells (e.g., strong state, strong society).

Not surprisingly, the framework prompted discussions on whether the notions of legitimacy, consent, coercion, etc., were really so clear cut. One participant noted that whether or not a state’s institutions of coercion or strong or weak depends on what period of history we’re interest in. Also, if coercive institutions are “weak”, that may actually be due to the fact that society was able to foster political transition. Finally, states are not monolithic, the strength of states and societies will vary substantially within a country’s territorial borders.

I had hoped that the presentation would be more linked to the topic of civil resistance. For example, how do civil resistance strategies and tactics need to change depending on which cell a state falls in? Moreover, I had hoped that the presentation would address how one might engage in civil resistance in failed states, such as Somalia.

Patrick Philippe Meier