MASS MOBILIZATION AND THE DEMOCRACY BIAS: A COMPARISON OF EGYPT AND UKRAINE. Marc Morjé Howard* and Meir R. Walters**

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1 MASS MOBILIZATION AND THE DEMOCRACY BIAS: A COMPARISON OF EGYPT AND UKRAINE Marc Morjé Howard* and Meir R. Walters** Abstract Journalists, policy analysts, and academics often invoke the notion of pro-democracy uprisings to describe mass mobilization under authoritarianism. In this article, we argue that viewing uprisings through the lenses of democratization or authoritarian persistence is misleading. We show how the 2011 and 2013 uprisings in Egypt, along with the Orange Revolution and Euromaidan movement in Ukraine, illustrate the crucial distinction between mass mobilization against an authoritarian incumbent and a desire for democratic governance. Moreover, we contend that analyzing uprisings through the lens of potential democratization obscures the other ways in which mobilization reconfigures power relations and citizens experience with politics. *Marc Morjé Howard is Professor of Government and Law at Georgetown University (mmh@georgetown.edu). In addition to numerous journal articles, he is the author of The Weakness of Civil Society in Post-Communist Europe and The Politics of Citizenship in Europe, both published by Cambridge University Press. **Meir R. Walters is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Government at Georgetown University (mrw56@georgetown.edu). From , he was a Fulbright fellow in Egypt. His work has been published in Perspectives on Politics and the Journal of North African Studies. Note: This is a draft. Please do not quote or cite without explicit permission. We are grateful for valuable suggestions and feedback on an earlier draft from Charles King, Hesham Sallam, and Lucan Way. 1

2 When should the sustained mobilization of citizens in opposition to an authoritarian regime be characterized as a democratic movement? Journalists, policy analysts, and academics often depict mass mobilization under authoritarianism as pro-democratic. However, this perspective can obscure the character of uprisings, the (possibly diverse) goals of participants, and the potential impact of uprisings on future power dynamics. While scholars of authoritarian persistence may express pessimism about the likelihood of mobilization leading to democratic reforms, they still tend to frame their analysis in terms of questions about regime change (or the likely lack thereof). In particular, analyzing mass mobilization through the lens of democratization or authoritarian persistence minimizes the importance of how power relations can be reconfigured short of regime change, and how people s everyday relationship with the (still authoritarian) state changes after uprisings. Recent events in Egypt and Ukraine illustrate how this tendency to characterize antiregime mobilization as democratic can lead to misguided analysis. Both Egypt and Ukraine recently experienced two sets of dramatic protest movements. In Egypt, the first uprising led to the ouster of longtime strongman Hosni Mubarak in February 2011, while the second took place in the summer of 2013, and ended with the removal of President Mohamed Morsi through a military coup. In Ukraine, the large-scale protests of prevented Viktor Yanukovych from winning the presidency through an allegedly fraudulent election; nearly a decade later, after Yanukovych had won the presidency in 2010, another wave of mass mobilization in 2013 forced Yanukovych to flee the country in Violent identity politics also emerged both in Egypt after Mubarak s ouster and in Ukraine following the removal of Yanukovych in In Egypt since 2011, the temporary unity of protestors devolved into fierce political (and sometimes physical) clashes between Islamists and diverse non-islamist political currents. The post- 2

3 Mubarak period also saw the emergence of increasingly pro-military nationalism and xenophobia, with numerous media outlets labeling oppositional domestic political factions as foreign agents, as occurred under previous Egyptian administrations. In Ukraine, the nonnegotiated ouster of Yanukovych in 2014 paved the way for foreign intervention, violent ethnolinguistic nationalist conflict, and the rising prominence of far right groups. The cases of Egypt and Ukraine also show how protest movements that unseat incumbents can occur in contexts that are not necessarily auspicious for democratic reform. Governments can be susceptible to popular mobilization even when formal political institutions are rigged, opposition groups suffer from co-optation, and the overall structures of state power are difficult to change. In short, unexpected large-scale protest movements (albeit of different sorts) in Egypt and Ukraine reveal that mobilization against an authoritarian regime or incumbent is not necessarily tied to a process of democratic reform and consolidation, nor hindered by the same factors that serve as barriers to democratization. In this article, we discuss four misconceptions about the character of protest movements that stem from an overemphasis on either democratization or authoritarian persistence (the two sides of the regime coin ). We illustrate how such misconceptions tend to produce misleading analysis by drawing on examples from the recent uprisings in Egypt and Ukraine. First, those who focus on the democratic potential of protests misleadingly imply that mass mobilization tends to lead to democratization. Second, some scholars assume that barriers to democratization are also barriers to mobilization. Third, a prevalent narrative presents uprisings against an authoritarian regime or incumbent as an expression of universal democratic norms. Fourth, when mass mobilization fails to lead to democracy, analysts often dismiss it as a case of failed democratization or authoritarian persistence, thereby avoiding a host of important questions. 3

4 Among the often-ignored issues are the ways in which mobilization shapes and reconfigures authoritarian power relations, citizens everyday experience, and how politics is talked about when uprisings fall short of achieving a measurable regime change. Finally, we argue that the concept of pro-democracy uprisings is usually a misnomer. Studying mass mobilization as a struggle for democratic reform assumes a degree of unity and coherence within protest movements that rarely exists. Of course, there is no formal academic consensus that uprisings against authoritarianism are necessarily movements for liberal democracy. Indeed, framing uprisings as pro-democratic works against insights from the literatures on social movements, politics under authoritarianism, and even democratic transitions (which tends to look at democratization as a process of strategic bargains among self-interested parties). Yet, assumptions about the democratic character of uprisings still cloud journalistic narratives, policy analysis, and sometimes make their way into academic discussions. All of these fields would be better served by separating the analysis of mass mobilization from democratization. Misconception I: Uprisings Often Lead to Democracy Over the course of history, democracy has been a rare outcome of mass mobilization. On the one hand, as Charles Tilly argues, there is a broad correspondence between democratization and protest movements, with protests generally occurring in democratizing states and receding in autocracies. Indeed, democracies are more susceptible to protests than autocracies, because their relative political openness makes unofficial political engagement less costly. 1 On the other hand, however, it is less clear whether or how protest movements lead to democratization. And the historical record shows that social movements often do not bring about consolidated 4

5 democratization, at least not directly. Moreover, mass mobilization often supports antidemocratic regimes. For example, opposition movements have governed in an authoritarian manner once they took power following national liberation movements (e.g., in Algeria and Tunisia), mass mobilization against a dictator (e.g., the Iranian revolution), and the breakup of the Soviet Union (e.g., Belarus and Armenia in the early 1990s). 2 Epochal revolutions (such as the French, Russian and Chinese revolutions) that fundamentally changed global power structures and political norms involved tremendous violence and led to various forms of non-democratic rule. Revolutions usually end by establishing a political structure robust enough to maintain political bargains among competing groups. Democracy is only one and a historically rare means to establish a new political order in the wake of major social conflict. 3 For example, Napoleon s empire and the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy followed the French Revolution. And Fascist Italy and Germany, communist China, and national independence movements in the third world drew upon mass mobilization as a means to form new non-democratic regimes. While many more recent civic revolts over the past decades temporarily resulted in fairer elections and increased freedoms, these democratic advances (as in Ukraine following the Orange Revolution) often eroded with time. Additionally, scholars argue that violence can undermine the prospects for democratization following mass mobilization. 4 However, as we illustrate with the case of Ukraine s Orange Revolution (often cited as a case of nonviolent resistance), even relatively peaceful mass mobilization against an autocrat does not necessarily aim towards or achieve lasting democratic reform. 5

6 Misconception II: Barriers to Democratization are Barriers to Mobilization Egypt and Ukraine both share features such as foreign support for the maintenance of the status quo, lack of a cohesive oppositional leadership, and underlying societal fissures that scholars cited as likely barriers to both popular mobilization and democratization. However, these factors did not prevent popular uprisings from unseating seemingly entrenched incumbents. In both cases, protestors mobilized against authoritarian governments despite the presence of major barriers to achieving institutional democratic reform. Thus, recent events in Egypt and Ukraine illustrate how countries facing significant barriers to democratization are not shielded from mass mobilization. The fact that democratization was not likely in these countries did not prevent protestors from going to the streets. In both Egypt and Ukraine, uprisings occurred despite international factors weighing against democratic reform. In Egypt, U.S. strategic interests aligned with supporting the Mubarak regime until mass protests made it no longer viable to do so. Even if the Obama administration s decision to finally support Mubarak s ouster influenced outcomes (in contrast to Bahrain where the U.S. continued to back the monarchy in the face of government repression of protests), this only occurred after sustained mobilization tied the U.S. administration s hands. Around the time of the Orange Revolution, Ukraine did not occupy an international position that made democratization likely. Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way categorize Ukraine as an unlikely case for international pressure to drive democratization. They further argue that commentators often exaggerate the importance of Western aid to mobilization. Western pressure did not severely constrain authoritarian behavior, and international incentives for democratization, such as the possibility of EU membership, were never on the table. 5 Putin s support for Yanukovych during the Euromaidan protests, and the likelihood that 6

7 Russia would continue to interfere, also arguably made the prospects for democratization less likely. Yet, this did not prevent the protests from growing. Moreover, in both Ukraine and Egypt, collective action occurred despite the lack of a unifying leadership from formal opposition groups and civil society. Such limitations of the opposition did not hinder mobilization, though they do serve as continuing limits on the possibilities for institutional reform. In Ukraine, leading oligarchs who have long dominated Ukrainian politics and exerted influence through patronage largely funded the Orange Revolution. Elites continued to manipulate purportedly democratic institutions, and many civil society groups dissolved or were co-opted. 6 Similarly, in Egypt mass mobilization occurred in spite of weak and divided formal opposition parties and civil society organizations. Grassroots oppositional movements became increasingly active over the decade prior to the 2011 uprising (and the number of protests and strikes increased). However, they were systematically repressed, marginalized from formal politics, or co-opted by the Mubarak regime, as opposition groups generally are in contexts of prolonged authoritarian governance. 7 Finally, in both Ukraine and Egypt, the temporary unity of protestors masked sectarian, ideological, and class differences that resurfaced later. As we discuss in more detail below, the Orange Revolution and protests in Ukraine, like other urban civic revolutions, relied on temporary negative coalitions of protestors with various grievances who rapidly mobilized in city centers. In Egypt, as the uprising against Mohamed Morsi s presidency on June 30, 2013 dramatically showed, alliances between Islamists and other groups in the 2011 uprising were ephemeral. This was contrary to initially optimistic accounts of the possibility of political 7

8 cooperation across old ideological boundaries. In both Egypt and Ukraine, in the wake of popular mobilization, elites exploited divisions over issues such as religious ideology and national identity in order to bolster their own power. Overall, while several factors supported continued authoritarian rule, these did not prevent collective action. In Egypt and Ukraine, neither foreign support for authoritarian elites, the absence of cohesive opposition leadership, or underlying societal divisions prevented large numbers of people from organizing and responding to the call for protests. This suggests that the barriers to institutional democratization and mobilization are distinct from one another. Misconception III: Mobilization against Dictatorship is an Expression of Democratic Norms Observers of uprisings often imply that when mass movements are against dictators, they are thereby for democracy. This imposes a teleological narrative upon protest movements that risks mischaracterizing protestors goals, overemphasizing their cohesion, and minimizing the role of non-participants and counterrevolutionaries. According to a prevalent narrative by early observers of the 2011 uprisings in the Arab world, these events were momentous because they appeared to fall in line with the discourse and symbolism of a global progression towards democratic modernity. For example, sociologist Jeffery Alexander characterizes the January 25 uprising in Egypt as the most important democratic movement in the history of the Arab world. According to Alexander, participants in the revolution were motivated by a broadly encompassing, civil and universalistic solidarity, rather than by narrower, primordial, and more particularistic concerns. 8 Other depictions of the Arab uprisings also portrayed them as straightforward struggles for liberal democracy, and some observers downplayed fears of violent identity politics, arguing 8

9 that Islamist groups would simply be one constituency participating in an inclusive democratic political process. As John Esposito puts it: The uprisings have revealed a broad-based prodemocracy movement that is not driven by a single ideology or by religious extremists. 9 In such accounts, the Egyptian uprising had tremendous world-historical significance, because it was supposedly reflective of a sea change within the Arab world towards an embrace of democratic values by groups with otherwise diverse ideological stances. Similarly, some early analyses of the Orange Revolution in Ukraine also viewed mass mobilization as the expression of newfound democratic values, largely driven by increased exposure to the West: Authentic democratic values were being reinforced by a new generation that had grown up initially under glasnost, and later with a broad awareness of democratic practices around the world. 10 Moreover, some optimistic accounts of the Euromaidan protests characterize them as fundamentally democratic, boding even more hope than the Orange Revolution, which ultimately succumbed to authoritarian backsliding: the system incubated on the Maidan promises to be very different and more conducive to democracy than any Ukraine has seen in the past two decades. 11 In short, many observers were quick to frame both the 2011 Arab uprisings and the and protest movements in Ukraine as pro-western uprisings against authoritarianism and for liberal democracy. This narrative may have had more to do with the hopes and normative commitments of those writing about the uprisings than the character of the protest movements themselves. This is not to say that there is an academic consensus that the Arab uprisings or Color Revolutions were about fighting for liberal democracy. For example, some early observers of the Arab uprisings focused more on protestors social and economic demands than on an abstract yearning for democracy. 12 Also, some of those who penned overly optimistic narratives about 9

10 these uprisings were not regional specialists, and the latter did not always agree with such enthusiastic characterizations of the protest movements. However, the very fact that uprisings tend to draw academic tourists 13 who parachute into newly sacred spaces such as Tahrir Square shows how observers can be motivated to frame their study of mass uprisings more in terms of their own hopes and normative visions than by empirical realities on the ground. Only a few pundits may completely back the notion that mobilization against an autocrat should be equated with support for liberal democracy. However, the idea that democracy is inherently attractive and destabilizing to autocracies often seeps into academic discourse. Even work that relies on hard-nosed game-theoretic analysis of dictatorships sometimes makes assumptions about the democratic ideals of protest movements, though they are not necessarily central to the overall theory. Such accounts of protestors democratic ideals recur despite the fact that such a notion does not match up with accounts of transitions to democracy being based on bargaining between self-interested actors, and the possibility that democratization can occur without democrats. 14 A related problem is that journalists, policy analysts, and scholars often assume that in order for protestors to successfully mobilize against a dictator, they must be unified around a pro-democratic ideology articulated by prominent intellectuals. However, historically, prominent intellectuals have supported various forms of governance ranging from communism to liberal democracy to fascism. While some intellectuals have played a key role in supporting democratization (for example, Vaclav Havel in post-communist Czechoslovakia), others have embraced non-democratic regimes (for example, Carl Schmitt in Nazi Germany). In short, intellectuals are not inherently democratic, and neither are protestors. 10

11 In Ukraine, the assumption that participants in the Orange Revolution and the Euromaidan protests were united under a coherent pro-western and pro-democratic ideology was both widespread and largely incorrect. There was a lack of ideological unity among protestors, who were brought together in large numbers, primarily in response to Yanukovych s violent crackdown. Additionally, while extreme right-wing groups were a minority among the protestors, they played a disproportionate role in organizing the movement and defending protest camps from the police. As Mark Beissinger shows, surveys conducted around the time of Ukraine s Orange Revolution reveal that most participants in the uprising were not committed to democratic values, even as organizers presented a master narrative of a democratic revolution: [N]ot only did Orange revolutionaries display weak commitment to the democratic values represented in the master narrative of the revolution, but they were a surprisingly diverse group in terms of their opinions on the major issues of the day in Ukraine, forming a negative coalition united primarily by shared symbols and identities, weak ties, and their extreme rejection of the incumbent regime. 15 Keith Darden and Lucan Way argue that surveys of the Euromaidan protests likewise falsify the notion that protestors were primarily unified around pro-democratic ideals. For example, one survey shows that fewer than 20 percent of protestors were driven to participate because of violations of democracy or the threat of dictatorship. Additionally, surveys show that slightly less than half the population supported the protests. 16 This was largely due to the large Russian speaking population in the south and east of the country, which makes up nearly half of Ukraine s population. 11

12 Similarly, the 2011 Arab Barometer surveys in Egypt and Tunisia reveal that most participants in the uprisings did not identify democratic governance as their primary aim. Similarly to Ukraine, only a minority of participants in both the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions prioritized civil and political freedoms as a motivation for revolutionary participation despite the fact that these revolts were widely framed when they occurred as struggles for democracy. 17 As in Ukraine, people participated in demonstrations in Egypt and Tunisia for a variety of reasons, and it is a misleading oversimplification of both cases to depict mass mobilization in terms of a teleological narrative of pro-democracy uprisings. Misconception IV: Failure of Mobilization to Democratize is a Case of Authoritarian Persistence Scholarship on politics under authoritarianism has often offered a corrective to overly optimistic accounts of uprisings in places such as Egypt and Ukraine as democratic panaceas. Eschewing the democratizing bias and the fallacy of electoralism 18 of earlier literatures on democratization, scholars of authoritarianism began focusing on the adaptability of authoritarian leaders who often incorporate electoral politics and limited liberalization without making major democratic political reforms. Over the past 15 years or so, there has been a growth in work on the internal logic of power maintenance in dictatorships of various stripes, which focuses more on the dynamics of political survival under various conditions than on the barriers to democratization per se. However, there is still a tension within the contemporary literature on authoritarianism between studying authoritarian regimes in terms of the barriers they pose to democratization, and studying power dynamics under authoritarianism on their own terms. Scholarship on authoritarian persistence treats authoritarian regimes as cases of non-democracies, and focuses 12

13 on questions about the factors that drive or hinder democratization. This approach is problematic because it tends to ignore transformations within authoritarian regimes that are not connected to processes of democratization. Scholarship on politics under authoritarianism, on the other hand, examines how various forms of dictators maintain power, how their elite coalitions change, and how ordinary citizens experience, engage with, and debate politics. 19 This literature escapes the democratizing bias of the authoritarian persistence literature by assuming that it is possible for a given country to remain under some form of autocracy, even if its leaders, governmental coalitions, and strategies for engaging with and co-opting various societal groups are in flux. Power relations in an autocracy can shift in crucial ways without democratization becoming more likely. Today, most political scientists claim that their work falls within the latter category. However, the democratizing bias of the authoritarian persistence paradigm still frequently slips into how scholars talk about authoritarianism, even if this is not always consistent with other strands of their work. This is perhaps partly due to the continued fascination with questions about democratization (or its absence) within policy debates and journalism. Scholars tend to pose questions about the potential for democratization in the wake of mass mobilization against dictators, as in the so-called Arab Spring, Color Revolutions, and Euromaidan protests. Studying mass mobilization through the lens of regime type whether democratization or authoritarian persistence risks conflating questions about the broadly construed durability of an authoritarian regime (i.e., its unlikeliness to democratize) with the stability of particular leaders, coalitions, and institutions. In Egypt, since mass protests led to Hosni Mubarak s ouster in 2011, there have been three presidents in three years, thousands of protestors killed and tens of thousands of activists imprisoned. In Ukraine in 2004, Viktor Yanukovych was prevented from 13

14 ascending to power in contested elections. He was then voted into the presidency in 2010, and then fled after another wave of mass mobilization in (which was followed by Russian intervention and ongoing ethnic conflict). While power relations may not be becoming more democratic, they are certainly shifting in important ways. Observations about broadly conceived authoritarian persistence sideline the major transformations that are underway. First, authoritarian persistence (i.e., the absence of institutional democratization) needs to be distinguished from the stability of a regime. Scholars of authoritarianism correctly identified trends in entrenched regimes that would hamper rapid transitions to democratic governance, even in the face of large-scale public mobilization that could topple an executive. As Jason Brownlee and Joshua Stacher put it in the wake of the 2011 uprisings in Egypt, while much remains to be determined about the long-term trajectory of post-mubarak Egypt, so far there is as much continuity as change. 20 In Ukraine, oligarchs continued to dominate the political arena after the Orange Revolution, and remained powerful throughout Viktor Yushchenko s presidency ( ). Once elected as president in 2010, Yanukovych increased the role of familial clientalism, coupled with overt authoritarian repression. In short, the legacies of authoritarian cooptation, exclusion, and political manipulation of opposition groups left an unequal political playing field in both countries, just as they generally do in contexts of sustained authoritarian governance. However, this does not mean that dominant parties and coalitions have remained unfazed in the wake of mass mobilization. To turn Brownlee and Stacher s phrase on its head, there has been as much change as continuity following popular uprisings in places such as Egypt. Even entrenched centers of power must adapt in the face of dramatic political events, such as rapid executive turnover, identity conflict, and security crackdowns. In other words, regimes can be 14

15 persistently authoritarian without being stable. Democratization may be highly unlikely in a given country, even as its political configurations are shifting. Second, even when a given ruler s attempts to entrench his or her power may have longterm consequences that hinder democratization, this does not mean that this ruler s position is necessarily stable in the face of unexpected shocks. Whether a ruler will step down in the face of mass mobilization is driven by highly iterative and contingent events that are difficult if not impossible to predict, even for those with insider knowledge. This was evident in both Egypt in 2011 and in Ukraine in , where protestor-regime dynamics were driven by the iterative and contingent dynamics of government repression and protestors response to it, as well as by insider bargaining and power plays. Both cases illustrate how leaders do not always respond to protests in ways that outside observers would gauge to be serving their best interests and most amenable to strengthening their power. Finally, once mass mobilization has occurred, it is difficult to reestablish public quiescence. In both Egypt and Ukraine, recent experiences with mass protests may have made future collective action more likely without necessarily increasing the likelihood of democratization. Political elites with vested interests have also attempted to rally supporters around issues such as nationalism and against real or trumped up internal threats. Thus, in the wake of popular uprisings, both proponents of democratic reform and reactionary forces can use mobilization as a tool to further secure their power and interests. In Egypt, following mass mobilization and the ouster of then-president Mohamed Morsi in a military coup in June-July 2013, the military actively attempted to mobilize the public against the Muslim Brotherhood, and for a renewed military-backed security state. This was done partly through increased censorship and a media purge that created an environment in 15

16 which only pro-state media personalities could flourish or even safely work. In Ukraine, following the ouster of Yanukovych in 2014, and the rise of ethno-nationalist conflict between Russian-speaking and Ukrainian-speaking regions, propaganda by various sides obscure what the facts really are. In short, the cases of Egypt and Ukraine highlight how elites attempts to stabilize their power in authoritarian regimes can have unintended consequences. Survival strategies by autocrats can create institutional legacies that make democratization unlikely without necessarily stabilizing a leader, his or her immediate cadre, party, or state-society relations. In some cases, the unlikelihood of near-term democratization is over-determined. Focusing on the absence of democracy treats uprisings as inconsequential unless they bring about a certain set of institutional reforms. It is merely another instance of the democracy bias one that leaves aside insights from research on politics under authoritarianism that studies power relations independently of questions about democratization. The Misnomer of Pro-Democracy Uprisings The concept of pro-democracy uprisings implies that protest movements are teleological that they are successful insofar as they bring about democratic reforms, and are failed if they do not. This imputes a particular shared vision among protestors, which may never have existed in the first place, or can change dramatically over time. It takes the narrative of some activists, journalists, and commentators as definitively reflecting the motivations of the overall movement, or even the hopes and desires of the broader public. This problematically ignores the inherent complexity of mass movements, and the latent tensions that often violently come to the surface in their wake. It also tends to ignore the role of non-participants, who are 16

17 generally the overwhelming majority. In fact, mobilization does not naturally lead to and in fact often works against democratization. Additionally, the barriers to mass mobilization are not always the same as the barriers to democratization. Thus, while longstanding forms of political engineering, co-optation, and repression can make democratic reform difficult, they do not necessarily shield a given leader or elite cadre from mass protests. Mass mobilization does not usually occur because the public is rallying behind a coherent shared set of democratic political and social ideals, and regimes can be vulnerable to mass protest movements, even under conditions in which institutional democratic reform is highly unlikely. In order to assess the impact of mass mobilization, scholars should more fully eschew the authoritarian persistence paradigm, and clearly distinguish between the durability of a broadly construed regime type and the stability of a particular ruler, his or her elite coalitions, and statesociety relations. Doing so would highlight the insights of the growing body of work on politics under authoritarianism that does not focus on questions about democratic transitions. Likewise, mass mobilization can work for and against the interests of dictators. Publics often rally behind issues such as nationalism and xenophobia, which can reestablish a new authoritarian status quo as much as they can threaten the stability of future executives power. Thus, while elites often attempt to co-opt protest movements in the wake of mass uprisings, they are not always successful at limiting mobilization that does not serve their interests. The rise of xenophobic nationalism, pro-state propaganda, and popular support for security crackdowns do not augur democratic reform. Yet, they may signal that the state is in crisis, or going through dramatic shifts in power relations, and not simply returning to the status quo prior to mobilization. Focusing on the details of how elites attempt to reestablish power, 17

18 manipulate their public image, and renormalize state-society relations, as well as how publics experience and respond to such political maneuvers, would tell us much more about the impact of mass mobilization under authoritarianism than accounts that primarily seek to explain the absence of democratization. In sum, questions about regime change tell us little about why protests occur, how they evolve, and how they reshape power relations in autocracies. Scholars should study extraordinary events, such as mass mobilization, on their own terms for the changes they bring about. Decoupling the study of mass uprisings from regime change would emphasize how protest movements can bring about fundamental shifts in power relations without leading to, or even necessarily aiming for, democratization. 18

19 NOTES 1 Charles Tilly, Social Movements, (Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers, 2004): Keith Darden and Lucan Way, Who Are the Protesters in Ukraine? The Monkey Cage, The Washington Post, February 12, 2014, available at 3 Arthur L. Stinchcombe, Ending Revolutions and Building New Governments, Annual Review of Political Science 2 (June 1999): Several studies argue that nonviolent uprisings are a relatively effective strategy for pushing for democratic reform. See, for example, Barbara Geddes, Joseph Wright and Erica Frantz, Autocratic Breakdown and Regime Transitions: A New Data Set, Perspectives on Politics 12 (June 2014): 327; Maria J. Stephan and Erica Chenoweth, Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict, International Security 33 (Summer 2008): 7-44; Andrea Kendall-Taylor and Erica Frantzm How Autocracies Fall, The Washington Quarterly 37 (Spring 2014): 35-47; Adrian Karatnycky and Peter Ackerman, How Freedom Is Won: From Civic Resistance to Durable Democracy (Washington, DC: Freedom House, 2005). 5 Steven Levitsky and Lucan A. Way, Competitive Authoritarianism: Hybrid Regimes After the Cold War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010): In his December 2013 assessment of the unlikelihood of the success of the Ukrainian protest movements, Lucan Way listed six reasons to be cautious about optimism for the ability of mass mobilization to impact change, three of which focused on the lack of opposition leadership and cohesion. Lucan Way, Six Reasons to Be Cautious about Likelihood of Opposition Success in Ukraine, The Monkey Cage, The Washington Post, December 17, 2013, available at 7 On the rise of Egyptian grassroots oppositional movements prior to the 2011 uprisings, see Joel Beinin and Frédéric Vairel, eds., Social Movements, Mobilization, and Contestation in the Middle East and North Africa (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2011); Dina Shehata, ed., The Return of Politics: New Protest Movements in Egypt [in Arabic] (Cairo: Al Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, 2010). On the limitations of Egypt s formal opposition groups, see Thomas Carothers, Egypt s Dismal Opposition: A Second Look, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, May 11, 2013, available at For an account of the evolution of opposition-government relations in Mubarak s Egypt, see Holger Albrecht, Raging Against the Machine: Political Opposition Under Authoritarianism in Egypt (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2013). 8 Jeffrey C. Alexander, Performative Revolution in Egypt: An Essay in Cultural Power (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2011): xii;

20 9 John Esposito, Arab Youth Want Democracy, Not Theocracy, CNN, February 28, 2011, available at 10 Adrian Karatnycky, Ukraine s Orange Revolution Foreign Affairs 84 (March-April 2005): Nadia Diuk, Finding Ukraine, Journal of Democracy 25 (July 2014): See, for example, Walter Armbrust, The Revolution Against Neoliberalism, Jadaliyya, February 23, 2011, available at 13 Mona Abaza, Academic Tourists Sightseeing the Arab Spring Ahram Online, September 26, 2011, available at for an account of Western-centric narratives about the uprisings in the Arab world, see Rabab El-Mahdi Orientalising the Egyptian Uprising, Jadaliyya, April 11, 2011, available at 14 For an example of a recent game theoretic account that invokes the inherent connection between mass mobilization and democratic ideals, this statement: Every revolution and every mass movement begins with a promise of democratic reform, of a new government that will lift up the downtrodden and alleviate their suffering. That is an essential ingredient in getting the masses to take to the streets. Of course, it doesn t always work. Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and Alastair Smith, The Dictator's Handbook: Why Bad Behavior is Almost Always Good Politics (New York: PublicAffairs, 2011): 196. For debates about the role of commitment to democratic values in regime transitions, see, for example, Ghassan Salame, ed., Democracy without Democrats?: The Renewal of Politics in the Muslim World (London: I.B. Tauris, 1994); John Waterbury, Fortuitous Byproducts, in Transitions to Democracy, ed. Lisa Anderson (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999): Mark R. Beissinger, The Semblance of Democratic Revolution: Coalitions in Ukraine's Orange Revolution, American Political Science Review 107 (August 2013): Keith Darden and Lucan Way, Who Are the Protesters in Ukraine? The Monkey Cage, The Washington Post, February 12, 2014, available at 17 Mark R. Beissinger, The Semblance of Democratic Revolution: Coalitions in Ukraine's Orange Revolution, American Political Science Review 107 (August 2013):

21 18 Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way, The Rise of Competitive Authoritarianism, Journal of Democracy 13 (April 2002): 51; Terry Lynn Karl, The Hybrid Regimes of Central America, Journal of Democracy 6 (July 1995): For work on the politics of leader survival under various forms of dictatorship, see, for example, Milan W. Svolik, The Politics of Authoritarian Rule (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012); for work on the everyday experience of citizens under autocracy, see, for example, Lisa Wedeen, Ambiguities of Domination: Politics, Rhetoric, and Symbols in Contemporary Syria (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999); Lisa Wedeen, Peripheral Visions: Publics, Power, and Performance in Yemen (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008). 20 Jason Brownlee and Joshua Stacher, Change of Leader, Continuity of System: Nascent Liberalization in Post-Mubarak Egypt, APSA Comparative Democratization Newsletter 9 (May 2011): 1. 21