Going, going, gone? Varieties of dissent and leader exit
| Published date | 01 September 2023 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/00223433221092813 |
| Date | 01 September 2023 |
| Subject Matter | Regular Articles |
Regular Article
Going, going, gone? Varieties of dissent
and leader exit
Kristian Skrede Gleditsch
Department of Government, University of Essex & Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO)
Roman-Gabriel Olar
School of Law and Government, Dublin City University
Marius Radean
Department of Government, University of Essex
Abstract
We examine how popular dissent affects the likelihood that political leaders lose power, distinguishing between types
of dissent in terms of nonviolent/violent primary tactics as well as the level of individual participation. We posit that
protests threaten leaders both directly through the gover nance costs of citizen non-compliance, and indirectly
through the increased risk of elite defections in the ruling coalition. In a series of propositions we detail how the
type of dissent and the magnitude of participation influence the odds of leaders surviving in office. We argue that
mass nonviolent challenges tend to be more threatening to a leader’s rule than violent dissent, given the character-
istics of movements likely to choose nonviolent tactics. Moreover, the effectiveness of the challenge increases in the
scale and size of the dissident campaign, and movements that can mobilize larger numbers have a comparative
advantage in nonviolent tactics. Employing data on political leaders’ tenure and dissident campaign characteristics,
we provide evidence consistent with our expectations.
Keywords
leaders, mobilization, nonviolence, violence
Introduction
Now, I’ve just got to cut loose
Before it gets late
So I’m going
I’m going
I’m gone
(Bob Dylan, Going,Going, Gone, Planet Waves, 1974)
We develop a theory of how, and under what condi-
tions, violent and nonviolent dissent influence a leader’s
political survival. We posit that dissent threatens leaders
both directly through the governance costs of citizen
non-compliance, and indirectly through the increased
risk of elite defections in the ruling coalition. In short,
leaders are substantially more likely to leave office when
active mass mobilization makes it difficult to hang onto
power. However, mass nonviolent challenges are likely to
be more threatening to a leader’s rule than violent dis-
sent, given the characteristics of movements likely to
choose nonviolent tactics.
Maintaining power is often taken as a leader’s key
motivation, shaping decisions and political outcomes
(Bueno de Mesquita et al., 2003). In democracies, polit-
ical power is ultimately allotted basedon competitive elec-
tions with popular participation. In non-democracies,
political power is typically seen as emanating primarily
from other elites, who decide tosupport or replace a leader
Corresponding author:
ksg@essex.ac.uk
Journal of Peace Research
2023, Vol. 60(5) 729–744
ªThe Author(s) 2022
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DOI: 10.1177/00223433221092813
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based on the leader’s ability to offer rents or policy con-
cessions (Gandhi, 2008; Svolik, 2012). The existing liter-
ature on leaders’ political survival has emphasized the risk
of intra-elite threats such as coups, and paid less attention
to the role of large-scale popular challenges from outside
the ruling coalition. Mass challenges can be either violent
or nonviolent. The conventional assumption is that vio-
lent challenges must be more serious – as reflected in
Mao’s famous quote that ‘power comes from the barrel
of a gun’. However, some argue that nonviolent tactics
can be more effective (Chenoweth & Stephan, 2011).
By contrast, we argue that the characteristics of dis-
sident groups, which make the choice of a specific tactic
more likely in the first place, are key in explaining why
‘nonviolence works’. We broaden measures of dissent
impact by focusing on whether leaders lose office. Exist-
ing studies examine mainly cases where leaders facing
dissent are ousted or irregularly removed from power
(Casper & Tyson, 2014; Aksoy, Carter & Wright,
2015; Beger, Dorff & Ward, 2016; Johnson & Thyne,
2018; Chenoweth & Belgioioso, 2019; Kim & Kroeger,
2019). This entails a far too limited understanding of the
possible impact of dissent as many leaders resign in the
face of challenges, precisely because they anticipate that
their rule will become untenable. In the perceptive
words of Bob Dylan, a leader may go before they are
likely to be ‘gone’.
While all dissent is damaging to leaders and increases
the odds of exit from office, we expect nonviolent direct
action to be generally more damaging than violent direct
action. Compared to violent conflict, nonviolent mobi-
lization can generate more significant governance costs
by threatening a state’s economic base and fueling elite
divisions. Violent conflict is often confined to distinct
ethnic groups in the periphery where the center’s reach is
weaker, which in turn generates fewer incentives for elite
opportunism than turmoil at the center. By contrast,
nonviolent uprisings typically reflect universal/non-
sectarian goals and take place in urban areas where the
state seems stronger by traditional measures of state
capacity. Yet the governance costs of large-scale nonvio-
lent mobilization in urban areas (which tend to be the
fiscal backbone of a state) typically exceed those arising
from a limited insurgency in the periphery.
Thus, governments are more sensitive to widespread
non-compliance. Since the effectiveness of dissent
increases in the scale and size of the campaign, we pro-
pose that nonviolent challenges have a comparative
advantage in unseating the leader because they can gen-
erate higher participation. This is because nonviolent
movements have a broader popular appeal and lower
barriers for entry. We test our theoretical expectations
by examining all leader exits and mass mobilizations
between 1945 and 2006, using data from the Archigos
project (Goemans, Gleditsch & Chiozza, 2009) and the
Nonviolent and Violent Campaigns and Outcomes
(NAVCO v2.0) (Chenoweth & Lewis, 2013). The
results provide strong evidence in support of our propo-
sitions, and are robust to alternative explanations affect-
ing the risk of exit and likelihood of dissent.
This article advances our understanding of political
survival and social resistance movements in several ways.
First, we show that popular compliance is the ultimate
requirement for being able to rule (Sharp, 1973; Levi,
1988), rather than the monopoly on the use of force
(Huntington, 1968; North, 1981; Weber, 1918/2004).
Practically, large-scale nonviolent mobilization and popu-
lar non-compliance pose a greater threat to rulers than
violent dissent. Second, we emphasize the role of agency
in challenges (e.g. groups strategically choosingthe dissent
tactic likely to be most effective based on their underlying
characteristics and resources), in contrast to work that
emphasizes the direct consequences of nonviolent tactics
(e.g. Chenoweth& Stephan, 2011). Finally, we conduct a
comprehensive empirical analysis of dissent and political
survival, explicitly comparing campaign types against no-
mobilizationcases, with a series of robustnesstests, includ-
ing matched data and strategies to consider possible
implications of strategic selection in mobilization.
Political survival and popular dissent
Much of the literature on political leaders and regimes
emphasizes the importance of governments’ resource
superiority in maintaining political control (Svolik,
2012). This perspective tends to focus on elite challenges
to leader tenure, since non-state actors cannot match
the state’s resources. In line with this, rebels rarely win
outright in a civil war (Bapat, 2005; Cunningham,
Gleditsch & Salehyan, 2009), revolutions fail more often
than they succeed (Beissinger, 2013; Weyland, 2009),
and popular dissent increases the likelihood of an elite
coup attempt but not success (Aksoy, Carter & Wright,
2015).
Other research highlights several challenges to regime
stability apart from regime insiders. Some emphasize
how losing interstate wars undermines a leader’s rule
(Bueno de Mesquita et al., 2003; Chiozza & Goemans,
2011), and there is also evidence that civil wars pose a
more severe threat to leaders who have recently gained
power than established leaders (Chiozza & Goemans,
2004; Debs & Goemans, 2010). In a forecasting model
730 journal of PEACE RESEARCH 60(5)
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