More than just the final straw stolen elections as revolutionary triggers

Comparative Politics

Volumn 41, Issue 3, 2009, Pages 253-272

  Kuntz, Philipp ^a   Thompson, Mark R ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 67651007565     PISSN: 00104159     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.5129/001041509X12911362972151     Document Type: Article

References (53)

1. An overview of this research agenda can be found in Andreas Schedler, ed., Electoral Authoritarianism: The Dynamics of Unfree Competition (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2006).
2. Mark R. Thompson, Democratic Revolutions: Asia and Eastern Europe (London: Routledge, 2004).
3. "Has the Age of Revolutions Ended?," Transitions Online, Jan. 13, 2005.
4. The potential for stirring up popular anger by merely alleging an election was stolen became apparent after Mexico's 2006 presidential election. In the absence of compelling evidence, however, neither streets protests nor a self-proclamation as the legitimate president could prevent the official winner from being installed.
5. See, for instance, Lyford P. Edwards, The Natural History of Revolution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970);
6. Chalmers Johnson, Revolutionary Change (Boston: Little Brown, 1966).
7. Barrington Moore, Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World (Boston: Beacon Press, 1966);
8. Jeffery M. Paige, Agrarian Revolution: Social Movements and Export-Agriculture in the Underdeveloped World (New York: Free Press, 1975);
9. Theda Skocpol, States and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of France, Russia, and China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979).
10. Charles Kurzman, "The Post-Structuralist Consensus in Social Movement Theory," in Jeff Goodwin and James M. Jasper, eds., Rethinking Social Movements: Structure, Meaning, and Emotion (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2004), pp. 111-20.
11. William H. Sewell, Jr., "Historical Events as Transformations of Structures: Inventing Revolution at the Bastille," Theory and Society, 25 (December 1996), 841-81;
12. Doug McAdam, Sidney Tarrow, and Charles Tilly, Dynamics of Contention (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001);
13. James M. Jasper, The Art of Moral Protest: Culture, Biography, and Creativity in Social Movements (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997).
14. Sewell, p. 862.
15. Jean-Pierre Reed, "Emotions in Context: Revolutionary Accelerators, Hope, Moral Outrage, and Other Emotions in the Making of Nicaragua's Revolution," Theory and Society, 33 (December 2004), 653-703.
16. Michael S. Kimmel, Revolution: A Sociological Interpretation (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1990), pp. 9-10.
17. Edgar Kiser and Margaret Levi, "Using Counterfactuals in Historical Analysis: Theories of Revolution," in Philip E. Tetlock and Aaron Belkin, eds., Counterfactual Thought Experiments in World Politics: Logical, Methodological and Psychological Perspectives (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), p. 204.
18. Timothy Wickham-Crowley, "Structural Theories of Revolution," in John Foran, ed., Theorizing Revolutions (London: Routledge, 1997), p. 68 n27.
19. Ibid., pp. 47-18.
20. An earlier statement by Harry Eckstein on the study of "internal wars" reflects this position: preconditions are seen as "amenable to systematic inquiry," precipitants "as defy[ing] systematic inquiry." Harry Eckstein, "On the Etiology of Internal Wars," History and Theoryw, 4 (February 1965), 140.
21. Applying the label "regime change" to the events discussed here will not go uncontested. The very features of electoral authoritarianism place this kind of regime close to the category of procedural democracy, thus obscuring that a real transition has occurred. And although a popular uprising does not guarantee democratic consolidation, it opens the possibility of democratization in the first place.
22. On the concept of political opportunity structures, see Goodwin and Jasper, eds.
23. Preference falsification poses a particular obstacle to collective action in highly oppressive contexts, but also in electoral authoritarian regimes the full extent of political dissatisfaction may not be known. On the concept of preference falsification, see Timur Kuran, Private Truths, Public Lies: The Social Consequences of Preference Falsification (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1995).
24. The framework so far could easily be restated in the language of rational choice theory. Cf. Joshua A. Tucker, "Enough! Electoral Fraud, Collective Action Problems, and Post-Communist Colored Revolutions," Perspectives on Politics, 5 (September 2007), 535-51, for such an approach.
25. On the role of emotions in popular protest, for example, see Jeff Goodwin, James M. Jasper, and Francesca Polletta, eds., Passionate Politics: Emotions and Social Movements (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001).
26. The logic behind this argument is derived from relative deprivation theory.
27. Jasper, p. 106.
28. On frame analysis, see Hank Johnston and John A. Noakes, eds., Frames of Protest: Social Movements and the Framing Perspective (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2005).
29. Thomas Carothers, "The Backlash against Democracy Promotion," Foreign Affairs, 85 (March-April 2006), 55-69.
30. See, for example, on the case of the German Democratic Republic, Daniel V. Friedheim, "Democratic Transition through Regime Collapse" (Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1997).
31. The best account of this argument is Jeff Goodwin, No Other Way Out: States and Revolutionary Movements, 1945-1991 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001).
32. Ibid., p. 26.
33. Ibid., p. 303.
34. Ghia Nodia, "Breaking the Mold of Powerlessness: The Meaning of Georgia's Latest Revolution," in Zurab Karumidze and James V. Wertsch, eds., Enough! The Rose Revolution in the Republic of Georgia (New York: Nova Science Publishers, 2005), p. 99.
35. Steven Levitsky and Lucan A. Way, "The Rise of Competitive Authoritarianism," Journal of Democracy, 13 (April 2002), 58.
36. Paul D'Anieri, "Leonid Kuchma and the Personalization of the Ukrainian Presidency," Problems of Post-Communism, 50 (September-October 2003), 59-60.
37. Taras Kuzio, "The Opposition's Road to Success," Journal of Democracy, 16 (April 2005), 129.
38. Cf. Joerg Forbrig and Pavol Demeš, Reclaiming Democracy: Civil Society and Electoral Change in Central and Eastern Europe (Washington, D.C.: The German Marshall Fund of the United States, 2007).
39. Darko Marinković, "Strike at Kolubara - a Case Study," South East Europe Review, 6 (2003), 41-71.
40. Between Disappointment and Hope - Public Opinion in Serbia, September 1999 (Belgrade: Centar za ProucavanjeAlteraativa, 1999).
41. Ihor Zhdanov, Oleksandr Lytvynenko, and Yuriy Yakymenko, "Ukraine before Elections - What Will It Be Like?," National Security & Defence, 6 (June 2004), 2-14.
42. Kuzio, p. 125.
43. David Usupashvili and Ghia Nodia, Electoral Processes in Georgia: Attempts to Establish Democracy in Georgia (Stockholm: IDEA, 2003), p. 14.
44. See, for instance, Lucan A. Way, "Kuchma's Failed Authoritarianism," Journal of Democracy, 16 (April 2005), 131 - 45.
45. Henry E. Hale, "Regime Cycles: Democracy, Autocracy, and Revolution in Post-Soviet Eurasia," World Politics, 58 (October 2005), 154;
46. Way, pp. 143-14;
47. Kuzio, p. 128.
48. See Mark R. Thompson, The Anti-Marcos Struggle: Personalistic Rule and Democratic Transition in the Philippines (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), ch. 7.
49. On diffusion dynamics in the postcommunist world, see Mark R. Beissinger, "Structure and Example in Modular Political Phenomena: The Diffusion of Bulldozer/Rose/Orange/Tulip Revolutions," Perspectives on Politics, 5 (June 2007), 259-76.
50. David R. Marples, "Color Revolutions: The Belarus Case," Communist and Post-Communist Studies, 39 (September 2006), 363, makes this point in an analysis of revolutionary failure after the 2006 presidential elections in Belarus.
51. The most recent Kenyan election, in December 2007, does appear to have been stolen, but its violent consequences have been shaped by ethnic divisions, a variable not discussed in the argument developed here.
52. Cf. Florian Bieber, "The Serbian Opposition and Civil Society: Roots of the Delayed Transition in Serbia," International Journal of Politics, Culture and Society, 17 (September 2003), 84.
53. Paul Pierson, Politics in Time: History, Institutions, and Social Analysis (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004), p. 14.