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The Covid-19 pandemic changed contentious politics worldwide. After causing a short-lived decline in global protest activities in early 2020, it has led to the emergence of a variety of pandemic-related protests. While previous work has mostly looked at how event frequencies have changed over time, this paper focuses on changes in protest issues. It applies quantitative text analysis to protest event descriptions and makes the following contributions. First, it traces the rise and fall of pandemic-related protests globally between 2020 and mid-2022, showing that, on average, more than 15% of protest events were pandemic-related. Second, it identifies the most dominant pandemic-related protest issues—masks and vaccination, the economy, business restrictions, health care, education, mismanagement, and crime—and their salience over time. Third, the paper explores potential explanations for differences in the prevalence of pandemic-related protest issues between countries. Multivariate regression analyses suggest a global divide. Protests in developed countries and liberal democracies were more likely about government restrictions. In contrast, citizens in less developed countries took to the streets to demand better healthcare provision.

ZusammenfassungÜber das letzte Jahrzehnt hat die politische Mobilisierung von Rechts in Deutschland und Europa zugenommen. Insbesondere die Migrationsbewegungen seit 2015 waren für Netzwerke wie Pegida Anlass auf die Straße zu gehen. Auf der anderen Seite haben sich diverse zivilgesellschaftliche Akteure von antifaschistischen Gruppen über Gewerkschaften bis hin zu Kirchen organisiert, um in Form von Gegendemonstrationen ein Zeichen gegen Rechts und für Weltoffenheit zu setzen. Diese Mobilisierungsdynamiken von Protest und Gegenprotest fanden im Zuge der Konflikte um staatliche Maßnahmen zur Eindämmung der Corona-Pandemie ihre Fortsetzung. Proteste und Gegenproteste können zum einen Ausdruck einer bestehenden Polarisierung der Gesellschaft sein und bergen zum anderen das Risiko einer weiteren Polarisierung auf der Straße. Am Beispiel der Interaktion zwischen Pegida und der NoPegida-Bewegung diskutiert dieser Beitrag die möglichen Folgen von Gegenmobilisierung. Die Analysen legen nahe, dass Gegenproteste nicht zu einer Demobilisierung der Gegenseite führen. Nichtsdestotrotz können sie einen Positionierungsdruck auf politische Entscheidungsträger*innen ausüben, mediale Aufmerksamkeit für gesellschaftliche Konflikte generieren und die Vernetzung progressiver zivilgesellschaftlicher Akteure fördern.

Authoritarian regimes are frequent targets of international pressure in the form of economic sanctions or threats thereof. Existing research shows that foreign interventions can carry several unintended consequences for politics and the economy in the targeted countries. One of the side effects of such interventions is boosting support for incumbent autocrats. Public demonstrations in support of embattled leaders are one aspect of this dynamic. This article investigates the link between foreign pressure and domestic mobilization in favor of ruling autocrats. It is argued that pressure simultaneously increases regime supporters' willingness to participate in rallies and the regime's demand to display and even overstate regime support. Foreign pressure facilitates mobilization as autocrats can fuel nationalist sentiments and frame foreign interventions as an attack on the nation as a whole. At the same time, rallies are a strategic tool to reduce political opportunities for the opposition and to signal resolve to the international community. Empirically, I conduct the first quantitative analysis that evidences the existence of a relationship between international pressure and mobilization in support of incumbent autocrats. Using monthly data on rally events in all authoritarian regimes between 2003 and 2015, I find that sanctions but also threats significantly increase pro-government mobilization. In addition, I show evidence for a moderating role of media freedom in the targeted state, highlighting the importance of how international events are portrayed in national news.

Authoritarian regimes are frequent targets of international pressure in the form of economic sanctions or threats thereof. Existing research shows that foreign interventions can carry several unintended consequences for politics and the economy in the targeted countries. One of the side effects of such interventions is boosting support for incumbent autocrats. Public demonstrations in support of embattled leaders are one aspect of this dynamic. This article investigates the link between foreign pressure and domestic mobilization in favor of ruling autocrats. It is argued that pressure simultaneously increases regime supporters' willingness to participate in rallies and the regime's demand to display and even overstate regime support. Foreign pressure facilitates mobilization as autocrats can fuel nationalist sentiments and frame foreign interventions as an attack on the nation as a whole. At the same time, rallies are a strategic tool to reduce political opportunities for the opposition and to signal resolve to the international community. Empirically, I conduct the first quantitative analysis that evidences the existence of a relationship between international pressure and mobilization in support of incumbent autocrats. Using monthly data on rally events in all authoritarian regimes between 2003 and 2015, I find that sanctions but also threats significantly increase pro-government mobilization. In addition, I show evidence for a moderating role of media freedom in the targeted state, highlighting the importance of how international events are portrayed in national news.

Vor einem Monat haben sich mehr als zwei Millionen Katalanen für die Unabhängigkeit der Region von Spanien ausgesprochen. Auch wenn das Referendum für illegal erklärt wurde und weniger als die Hälfte der Katalanen teilnahmen, verraten uns die Ergebnisse einiges über die Stärke der Unabhängigkeitsbewegung. Dieser Beitrag untersucht, wie ein mögliches legales Referendum mit höherer Wahlbeteiligung ausgehen könnte. Auch wenn die rechtlichen Rahmenbedingungen ein solches Referendum nicht vorsehen, unterstützen laut aktueller Umfragen auch eine Mehrheit der Spanier diesen Weg der Konfliktlösung.

Following its global diffusion during the last decade, the Internet was expected to become a liberation technology and a threat for autocratic regimes by facilitating collective action. Recently, however, autocratic regimes took control of the Internet and filter online content. Building on the literature concerning the political economy of repression, this article argues that regime characteristics, economic conditions, and conflict in bordering states account for variation in Internet filtering levels among autocratic regimes. Using OLS‐regression, the article analyzes the determinants of Internet filtering as measured by the Open Net Initiative in 34 autocratic regimes. The results show that monarchies, regimes with higher levels of social unrest, regime changes in neighboring countries, and less oppositional competition in the political arena are more likely to filter the Internet. The article calls for a systematic data collection to analyze the causal mechanisms and the temporal dynamics of Internet filtering.Related Articles

Glen, Carol M. 2014. "" Politics & Policy 42 (): 635‐657. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/polp.12093/abstract


Reynolds, Peter W. 2003. "." Politics & Policy 31 (): 512‐529. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1747-1346.2003.tb00160.x/abstract


Fisher, Bonnie,
Michael Margolis, and
David Resnick. 1996. "." Southeastern Political Review 24 (): 399‐429. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1747-1346.1996.tb00088.x/abstract
Related Media
. 2009. "Dr. Ronald Deibert, Director of the Citizen Lab at Toronto University and the Open Net Initiative Presents a Recently Completed Global Survey of more than 45 countries that Censor Online." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v = BWMn7RzdIX0

Websites: Website of the Open Net Initiative including the data used in this paper, country reports and online access to further material. https://opennet.net

Autocrats typically respond with coercion when citizens take to the streets demanding political reform. Sometimes, however, they tolerate mass protests and even give in to protesters' demands. While the effect of coercion on mobilization is well-studied, we know less about the role of concession-making. We argue that accommodating demands is rarely an effective strategy in demobilizing opposition movements. Authoritarian rulers are usually neither willing nor able to fully address protesters' dynamic demands, nor can they offer credible commitments. We conduct a quantitative analysis using multiple cross-national data sets to empirically assess the relationship between concessions by the government and subsequent mass mobilization. By analyzing protest events in temporal and spatial proximity, we estimate the effect of making concessions on protest mobilization at the subnational level in 18 autocracies from 1991 to 2012. Our results indicate that concessions are associated with a significant and substantive increase in subsequent protest activity.

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.

Mass movements that are able to overthrow a dictator do not always lead to democracy. Transition periods present narrow windows of opportunity in which activists face difficult decisions to build democracy and prevent authoritarian relapse. Existing scholarship offers limited guidance for pro-democracy forces because it focuses on unchangeable structural factors and cases with a known outcome. We propose an innovative approach for finding informative comparisons for ongoing transitions after authoritarian breakdowns. We quantify the similarity between all breakdowns caused by mass uprisings since 1945 based on their structural preconditions. We then apply our approach to Sudan's ongoing transition and draw lessons from two similar cases: the Philippines in 1986 (successful democratization); and Burma/Myanmar in 1988 (failed democratization). Our analysis shows that structural factors are weak predictors of transition outcomes and that Sudan shares characteristics with cases of both failed and successful democratization. Therefore, democratic transition appears possible in Sudan.

Right-wing populist (RWP) movements have been on the rise in Western democracies. Outside of party politics, such movements regularly organize demonstrations against political elites and minority groups. At the same time, civil society coalitions have mobilized against these movements. Yet we know little about the effect of counter-demonstrations on RWP protest activities. We derive competing theoretical expectations from previous work. On the one hand, counter-mobilization reduces mobilization because the original movement is less likely to achieve its goals (expected utility/costs). On the other hand, clashes and standoffs between opposing movements facilitate mobilization through polarization and anger (identity/emotions). We empirically analyze movement–countermovement dynamics using a new city-level event dataset on street protests by the German Pegida movement and its opponents. In our quantitative analysis, we investigate how counter-mobilization is associated with the onset of Pegida protests, their intensity in terms of participant numbers, and their demobilization. Counter-mobilization does not prevent protest onset, but large counter-demonstrations are associated with larger subsequent Pegida protests, and violence against Pegida supporters reduces the likelihood that they will stop protesting.