Information, Concessions and Reneging in Authoritarian Regimes

• In Event: Social Movements in Transregional Perspective

Abstract

How does information affect how autocratic governments make concessions to subnational protest campaigns? On the regional level, concessions are often promised to policy-oriented campaigns, because, I argue, repression in these cases is risky. The strategic purpose of concessions varies depending on the level of information available about the grievance. In cases where the government had little prior awareness of the motivating grievance, protests convey valuable new information, and concessions are used as a long-term adaptation strategy, to eliminate grievances and prevent citizens from becoming regime opponents. In many cases, however, the government already possesses information that policies it desires to pursue are unpopular and will produce protest. Here, the government possesses sufficient information that it seeks to avoid consultative institutions. Concessions are then used as a short-term demobilization strategy to disrupt a campaign’s capacity to mobilize. Once mobilization diminishes, the government reneges, or deliberately fails to implement the promised concession and pursues its desired policies unchanged. Using the Protest Campaigns of Moscow dataset, an original dataset I have compiled of campaigns held in Moscow, Russia, from 2013-2018, I find support for this theory. I find that when the government deliberately avoided acquiring public opinion information about its policies, promised concessions are not delivered in 60 percent of cases.

Author

• Sasha de Vogel, New York University