Popular rebellion and state response
This post from the The Monkey Cage, entitled "Cracking Down," might be of interest.
http://themonkeycage.org/blog/2011/0...ing_down/#more
Some choice lines:
Quote:
There are two basic strategies states use to combat urban uprisings: urban annihilation and coercive governance...Leaving aside the important question of the origins, cohesion, and organization of the opposition, it pays to focus on the political interests of state elites, not just their capacity, and in particular the interests of militaries.
First... it’s not necessarily how much state capacity you have, but instead what you do with it. The creation and deployment of state power are often endogenous to political interests and strategies...
Second, militaries are especially crucial because they are best able to carry out full-bore urban annihilation strategies. When the police falter, the internal paramilitaries break, and the party workers go home, regimes look to serried ranks of tanks and bayonets...
Research on the politics of crackdowns and military politics can help us make some sense of the daily headlines.
Regards,
OC
The Rising Threat of Revolt in Autocracies
A short essay by two American authors, one an academic, the other with the intelligence community, which appeared on Lawfare; the main article is behind a paywall:http://www.lawfareblog.com/2014/06/t...n-autocracies/
The Editor's introduction:
Quote:
People power” has long captured the hearts of Western publics, with images of brave protesters standing up to tyrants renewing our faith in how extraordinary ordinary people can be. Yet elite coups, not popular protest, have long been the biggest danger to dictators. However, the Arab Spring brought renewed attention to popular protests as a form of regime change, as autocrat after autocrat fell or appeared near collapse. Andrea Kendall-Taylor, who serves in the U.S. intelligence community, and Erica Frantz, a professor at Bridgewater State University, contend that the Arab Spring is not an anomaly: popular protest is indeed on the rise as a form of regime change and that this trend, if nurtured properly, could make the spread of democracy more likely.
Quote:
Authors’ Note: This essay draws on a recent article in which we argue that today’s dictators should be more concerned with popular protests than they have in the past.
Somewhat surprised they end on an optimistic note.