Revolutions, Crackdowns, and Quiescence: Communal Elites and Democratic Mobilization in Southeast Asia

Abstract

Urban mass mobilization often stimulates the collapse of authoritarian regimes, but the literature on social forces in democratization has not dealt adequately with these episodes of popular protest. Nor has it systematically compared democratic revolutions with cases of authoritarian crackdown and chronic quiescence, despite the prevalence of these alternative outcomes. This article critiques the democratization literature's excessive focus on class actors and economic factors by highlighting the importance of emotive appeals to nationalist and religious sentiments and solidarities in sparking, sustaining, and sanctifying high‐risk protest against authoritarian governments. A comparative historical analysis of seven Southeast Asian countries reveals that democratic uprisings are more likely both to emerge and to succeed when communal elites—a society's primary possessors of nationalist and religious authority—assume an oppositional posture. Explaining variation in mobilization outcomes thus requires exam...