Conquering and coercing: Nonviolent anti-regime protests and the pathways to democracy
| DOI | 10.1177/0022343319830267 |
| Author | Alex M Kroeger,Nam Kyu Kim |
| Published date | 01 September 2019 |
| Date | 01 September 2019 |
| Subject Matter | Regular Articles |
Conquering and coercing: Nonviolent
anti-regime protests and the pathways
to democracy
Nam Kyu Kim
Department of Political Science and Diplomacy, Sungkyunkwan University
Alex M Kroeger
Department of Political Science, University of California, Merced
Abstract
Recent research finds an association between nonviolent protests and democratic transitions. However, existing
scholarship either does not specify the pathways through which nonviolent protests bring about democratization
or conduct systematic empirical analyses demonstrating that the specified pathways are operative. This article
proposes four pathways through which nonviolent anti-regime protests encourage democratic transitions, empha-
sizing their ability to directly conquer or indirectly coerce such transitions. Most simply, they can conquer
democratic reforms by directly overthrowing authoritarian regimes and installing democracies. They can also
coerce democratic reforms through three additional pathways. Nonviolent anti-regime protests can coerce incum-
bent elites into democratic reforms by threatening the survival of authoritarian regimes. They also increase the
likelihood of elite splits, which promote negotiated democratic reforms. Finally, they encourage leadership change
within the existing authoritarian regime. Following leadership change, nonviolent movements remain mobilized
and are able to coerce democratic concessions from the regime’s new leaders. Our within-regime analyses provide
robust empirical support for each pathway. We show that nonviolent anti-regime protests conquer democratic
reforms by ousting autocratic regimes and replacing them with democracies. Nonviolent anti-regime protests also
coerce elites into democratic reforms by threatening regime and leader survival. These findings highlight the
importance of protest goals and tactics and also that nonviolent anti-regime protests have both direct and indirect
effects on democratization.
Keywords
civil conflict, democracy, democratization, nonviolence, protests
While mass protests often accompany democratic transi-
tions, their role in producing democratic transitions
remains open for debate. For example, elite-based the-
ories, while recognizing the limited role of protests at the
beginning of the transition process, emphasize the role of
elite negotiations (e.g. Huntington, 1993; O’Donnell &
Schmitter, 1986). Recent studies have placed greater
emphasis on mass protests, particularly those using non-
violent tactics, finding that they often trigger political
liberalization and the installation of democracy
(Bermeo,1997; Bratton & van de Walle, 1992; Celestino
& Gleditsch, 2013; della Porta, 2014). However, scho-
lars continue to debate the relationship between protest
tactics and democratization, with some finding that vio-
lent tactics also bring about democratic transitions (e.g.
Brancati, 2016; Wood, 2000). The superiority of non-
violence has also been questioned because of problems
with data quality, measurement, and omitted variables
Corresponding author:
namkkim1@gmail.com
Journal of Peace Research
2019, Vol. 56(5) 650–666
ªThe Author(s) 2019
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DOI: 10.1177/0022343319830267
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(e.g. Lehoucq, 2016). Moreover, the literature still lacks
a systematic account of the pathways through which
protests influence democratization.
1
This article builds on this debate by focusing on the
goals and tactics of mass protests as well as the pathways
connecting protests to democratization. We distinguish
between cases of violent and nonviolent anti-regime pro-
tests and direct action
2
and argue that only nonviolent
tactics increase the likelihood of democratic transitions.
3
Furthermore, we propose four pathways connecting
nonviolent anti-regime protests to democratic transi-
tions. Most simply, they can conquer democratic
reforms by directly overthrowing authoritarian regimes
and installing democracies. They can also coerce demo-
cratic reforms through three additional pathways. Non-
violent anti-regime protests can coerce incumbent elites
into democratic reforms by threatening the survival of
authoritarian regimes. They also increase the likelihood
of elite splits, which promote negotiated democratic
reforms. Finally, they encourage leadership change
within the existing authoritarian regime. Following lead-
ership change, nonviolent movements remain mobilized
and are able to coerce democratic concessions from the
regime’s new leaders.
We test our hypotheses by conducting within-regime
analyses on all authoritarian regimes from 1950 to 2007.
Unlike recent studies (e.g. Celestino & Gleditsch, 2013),
our within-regime analyses control for time-invariant
differences between autocratic regimes that may influ-
ence both protests and democratic transitions. Following
Geddes, Wright & Franz (2014), we define regimes
according to the group of individuals that influences
policy and leadership selection. This allows us to analyze
democratic transitions as a two-step process, estimating
the effect of anti-regime protests on both authoritarian
regime breakdown and subsequent democratic transi-
tions. Finally, we address concerns of selection bias aris-
ing from the endogenous nature of anti-regime protests
in several ways and show that selection bias is unlikely to
drive our main results.
Consistent with our expectations, we find that anti-
regime protests increase the likelihood of authoritarian
regime breakdown as well as subsequent transitions to
democracy and autocracy. However, we demonstrate the
importance of tactics by showing that only nonviolent
anti-regime protests systematically increase the likeli-
hood of democratic transitions and only violent anti-
regime protests systematically increase the likelihood of
autocratic transitions.
4
These results are robust to alter-
native measures and modeling strategies as well as assess-
ments of selection bias. Finally, in addition to
conquering democratic reforms, we show that nonvio-
lent anti-regime protests coerce reforms by threatening
regime and leader survival.
This study improves our understanding of democratic
transitions in several ways by bringing together the lit-
eratures on democratization, protests, and coups. Our
pathway analyses reinforce existing findings that nonvio-
lent anti-regime protests directly affect democratic tran-
sitions by ousting authoritarian regimes and installing
democracies (e.g. Celestino & Gleditsch, 2013; Cheno-
weth & Stephan, 2011; della Porta, 2014), but also high-
light the less appreciated indirect effects by showing that
even elite-driven democratic transitions can be influ-
enced by nonviolent anti-regime protests. We also
advance the work of Marinov & Goemans (2014) and
Thyne & Powell (2016), who call for a better under-
standing of the causes and consequences of coups, by
explaining the connection between anti-regime protests,
coups, and democratization. Finally, we present addi-
tional evidence that the goals and tactics of protests mat-
ter: only nonviolent anti-regime protests systematically
increase the likelihood of democratic transitions and only
violent anti-regime protests systematically increase the
likelihood of autocratic transitions.
Literature review
Theories of democratization often emphasize structural
factors such as economic development (Lipset, 1959),
inequality (Acemoglu & Robinson, 2006), natural
resources (Ross, 2001), globalization (Eichengreen &
Leblang, 2008), and democratic diffusion (Gleditsch &
Ward, 2006) to explain democratic transitions. These
theories give causal primacy to structural factors rather
than individual agency. In contrast, the transitologist
approach stresses that democratic transitions are often
driven by strategic behavior among incumbent regime
elites (Huntington, 1993; O’Donnell & Schmitter,
1986). Elite-based theories emphasize the importance
of divisions among ruling elites, particularly those
1
Huntington (1993) and Geddes, Wright & Frantz (2014) do,
however, explain different modes of democratization broadly.
2
We follow Celestino & Gleditsch (2013) by examining both
protests and direct action, which includes civil wars, but go further
by focusing on the goals of these movements.
3
Our analysis excludes sma ller-scale, narrowly ec onomic protests
analyzed by scholars like Lorentzen (2013).
4
This is not to say that democratization never follows violent protests
and direct action.
Kim & Kroeger 651
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