Authoritarian Regime Survival during Nonviolent Civil Resistance Campaigns

• In Event: The Dynamics of Civil Resistance

Abstract

When do authoritarian regimes survive challenges by mass, nonviolent civil resistance campaigns? In this paper, I examine Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega’s strategy to outlast and repress mass protests aimed at his government’s ouster. The protests were initially sparked by the government’s announcement of cuts to social security benefits, but spiraled into a mass pro-democracy civil resistance movement after government-linked paramilitaries attacked the peaceful protesters. The movement nearly toppled President Ortega’s government, while its suppression, with over four hundred dead at the hands of police and paramilitary forces, marks Latin America’s largest single episode of one-sided state violence in almost three decades. Utilizing an original NAVCO 3.0-compatible events dataset to analyze dynamic interaction between the protest movement’s activities and regime violence, I emphasize three factors: Ortega’s delaying tactics and patient rebuilding of loyal security forces, his reliance on calibrated, persistent levels of violence, and an international context permissive to authoritarian retrenchment. His strategy may have arisen from the diffusion of authoritarian learning: Ortega’s government has frequently relied on Libyan exiles from Muammar Gaddafi’s regime, who brought valuable lessons from Arab Spring protests. My analysis aligns with recent research showing how nonviolent civil resistance campaigns have encountered decreasing success rates in recent years.

Author

• Eric Seth Mosinger, Carleton College