With or Without You - Opposition Leadership and Mass Contestation in Georgia 2003 and Egypt 2011

Abstract

Authoritarian rulers face constant, structural threats to their survival (Schedler, forthcoming). To explain the downfall of authoritarian regimes, “transitologists” and students of authoritarian regimes focus on elite factionalism as the key destabilizing force. As the Arab Spring, the Colored Revolutions, and the fall of communism in 1989 suggest, however, aggrieved masses might pose an equally formidable threat to non-democratic regimes. But what do we know about mass uprisings, especially in authoritarian regimes? “Preference falsification” (Kuran 1991) and “structural opacity” (Schedler, forthcoming) make it difficult to predict their onset. Yet beyond this opacity in our research, it appears that we really do not know much about mass contestation in general. What explains the speed and extent of mass mobilization? How do the structures and (re)actions of authoritarian regimes influence the dynamics of mobilization? Critical Mass Theory (CMT) (Karklins and Petersen 1993, Kuran 1991, Lohmann 1994) as well as Social Movement Theory (SMT) (see, e.g. Benford and Snow 2000, McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly 2001, McCarthy and Zald 1987, Rucht 2012, Tarrow 1998, and, for a more critical approach Beinin and Vairel 2011a, Goodwin and Jasper 1999, Kurzman 2004) provide some answers to these questions, especially when the findings of these two theoretical strands are combined. Looking at the many occurrences of mass contestation since 1989, we assert that all of them had their distinct dynamics (see also: Plattner 2011, Way 2011). Most glaring, some mass uprisings were led by a distinct group of counter-elites (mainly the Colored Revolutions, bar Kyrgyzstan), whereas other uprisings did without a clear-cut leadership (the 1989 revolutions and the Arab Spring). Does leadership make a difference for dynamics of mass contestation? And do they make a difference for the (possible) outcomes of mass contestation? We address these two questions by looking at two cases of successful mass contestation: Georgia’s Rose Revolution in 2003 (with opposition leadership) and the Arab Spring in Egypt in 2011 (largely without opposition leadership). In addition to secondary sources, we conducted more than a dozen semi-structured interviews with opposition activists and participant observers in both countries during the summer of 2012.