Going, going, gone? Varieties of dissent and leader exit

Kristian Skrede Gleditsch, Roman-Gabriel Olar and Marius Radean
Additional contact information
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

Journal of Peace Research, 2023, vol. 60, issue 5, 729-744

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 governance 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 characteristics 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 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00223433221092813 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:joupea:v:60:y:2023:i:5:p:729-744

DOI: 10.1177/00223433221092813

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Peace Research from Peace Research Institute Oslo
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().