Regime Transformation From Below: Mobilization for Democracy and Autocracy From 1900 to 2021

• Published date: 01 October 2023
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/00104140231152793
• Author: Sebastian Hellmeier,Michael Bernhard
• Date: 01 October 2023
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

Comparative Political Studies

2023, Vol. 56(12) 1858–1890

© The Author(s) 2023

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DOI: 10.1177/00104140231152793

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Regime Transformation

From Below:

Mobilization for

Democracy and

Autocracy From 1900 to

2021

Sebastian Hellmeier

1

and Michael Bernhard

2

Abstract

Mass mobilization (MM) is an important driver of political change. While some

citizens organize in favor of more democratic institutions, others take to the

streets to support an authoritarian status quo. This article introduces measures of

pro-democratic and pro-autocratic MM using expert assessments for 179 polities

from 1900–2021. The data allow us to trace patterns in MM over time, across

regions and regime types. We use this new data to systematically analyze the

relationship between both types of mobilization and regime change. We conf‌irm

the f‌indings of the literature on contentious democratic politics, and our analysis

of autocratic mobilization allows us to make sense of the controversy in the

literature on “bad actors”in civil society. We show that MM in favor of autocracy

negatively affects democracy, making a case for specifying the goals of the actors

involved in contentious politics to more precisely understand their impact.

Keywords

democratization and regime change, social movements, quality of democracy,

civil society, mass mobilization

1

WZB Berlin Social Science Center, Germany

2

University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA

Corresponding Author:

Sebastian Hellmeier, Transformations of Democracy Unit, WZB Berlin Social Science Center,

Reichpietschufer 50, Berlin 10785, Germany.

Email: sebastian.hellmeier@wzb.eu

In August 2020, tens of thousands of Belarusians took to the streets de-

manding democratization following fraudulent elections.

1

Similar protests in

Sudan and Armenia brought down dictatorships, whereas in Lebanon or Hong

Kong their impact was limited. Recently, we have also seen citizens on the

streets in support of dictatorships in North Korea, Syria, and Venezuela or in

support of anti-democratic reforms in Brazil or Turkey. What is the role of

mass mobilization (MM) in stabilizing or changing a political regime? Prior

comparative research has produced conf‌licting answers to this question. Some

scholars see citizen activism as crucial to democratization (Bratton & van de

Walle, 1992;della Porta, 2016;Schock, 2005), whereas others have pointed

out the role of the citizenry in democratic breakdowns (Berman, 1997;Riley,

2010).

From the authors cited above, we know that the character of popular

mobilization is critical. The lack of nuance in prior comparative research and

the focus on pro-democracy movements has made it diff‌icult to detect those

cases in which MM for autocracy has undermined democracy. As a result, the

literature has had diff‌iculty differentiating when MM threatens democracy or

helps to promote it. Existing event data sets on MM are limited temporally and

geographically and do not classify events as pro-democratic or pro-autocratic.

The V-Dem data set (Coppedge et al., 2022, V12) is the f‌irst to provide

time-series cross-national data (1900–2021) on the degree of pro- and anti-

democratic MM in almost 180 countries.

2

Based on the knowledge of local

country experts, we build comparable latent measures of MM across space and

time. We compare our measures with existing data on related phenomena and

f‌ind substantial correlations where there is overlap. Our descriptive data

analysis shows that pro-democratic MM has been increasing over the last

century, reaching its peak in 2019. Pro-autocratic mobilization, by contrast,

was highest during the Cold War and the heyday of communism in Eastern

Europe. Whereas pro-democratic MM is most frequent in regimes with in-

termediate levels of democracy, pro-autocratic MM is common in closed and

electoral autocracies.

Next, we use this expert-coded data to investigate the relationship between

MM for different goals and subsequent regime change. Our analysis consists

of two parts. In the f‌irst part, we analyze the effect of MM on changes in the

level of democracy using V-Dem’s Electoral Democracy Index (Teorell et al.,

2019) in a standard panel setting. In the second part, we examine the rela-

tionship between MM and discrete forms of regime change (democratic

transition and breakdown) using data from Boix et al. (2013).

Our results show robust relationships between MM and regime change.

Pro-democratic MM is associated with a signif‌icant albeit small increase in the

quality of democracy. Moreover, we f‌ind that pro-democratic MM makes a

successful transition more likely. By contrast, pro-autocratic mobilization

reduces democratic quality and increases the risk of democratic breakdown.

Hellmeier and Bernhard 1859

However, we do not f‌ind evidence for an insulating effect of pro-democracy

mobilization on democratic breakdown. Our results add empirical evidence to

ongoing discussions about the role of citizens in regime change.

The Centrality of Civil Society Mobilization in

Regime Change

Civil society practices politics in two distinct fashions. First, civil society

organizations engage in the routine politics of interest articulation—lobbying

powerholders, organizing campaigns in support of interests, inf‌luencing

public opinion, agenda setting, monitoring the state, and intervening in

legislative and judicial politics. The second practice is more conf‌lictual. It is

when civil society organizations protest, demonstrate, coordinate large

contentious events, and practice civil disobedience in pursuit of their goals.

This is meant to mobilize support, publicize important issues, and impose

audience and reputational costs on other actors. This is the part of civil

society’s behavior with which we are concerned. The argument below is that

the mobilization of partisans of authoritarianism and democracy in civil

society is a common and consequential aspect of regime change. The balance

of forces at junctures where the future of rule is at stake plays an important role

in determining whether the outcome is change or stability. Therefore, we argue

that the mobilization of civil society in support of democracy should enhance

democratization and democratic stability, while mobilization for autocracy has

the opposite effect.

What is the basis for our expectations on the micro-level? What mecha-

nisms motivate citizens to take the kind of contentious actions that have the

potential to lead to regime change? Participation in MM signals preferences to

other members of the public, incumbents, and counterelites. Collective action

directed towards regime change, no matter the regime in question, is in-

herently dangerous to participants because of the state’s monopoly on the

(legitimate) use of violence. While peaceful protest is often less dangerous in

democracies than in autocracies, it entails greater risks than other forms of

political action, especially when it transcends the boundaries of legality.

Under authoritarianism, especially when the state aggressively defends its

monopoly on organization, any public expression of discontent is inherently

dangerous.

A well-established theoretical literature shows how protest as a form of

signaling reveals hidden preferences and changes the calculus of individuals

on whether to engage in collective action because there is strength in numbers

(DeNardo, 1985;Granovetter, 1978;Marwell & Oliver, 1993). It is more

diff‌icult and costlier for any regime to punish large numbers of protesters.

Under conditions of uncertainty about the preferences of one’s fellow citizens,

it takes bravery, a high level of moral commitment, or even recklessness to

1860 Comparative Political Studies 56(12)