Defection, Campaign Strategy and Democratization

• In Event: Regime Durability in the Face of Coups

Abstract

Does dissent-induced defection raise the likelihood of regime change and democratization? Existing literature on democratic change tends to focus either on the role played by the elites, or on popular mobilization. We bridge these two strands of literature, and identify what types of defection increase the likelihood of democratic change and democratic consolidation. To this end, we build a novel dataset measuring a broad set of different types of security force and political elite defection during non-violent and violent campaigns. We show that democratization is most likely to occur when different types of actors defect, and defection starts at the street, and is later coordinated from the top of the system. This finding only holds for non-violent campaigns.

Authors

• Marianne Dahl, PRIO / NTNU

• Mauricio Alejandro Rivera Celestino

• Håvard Mokleiv Nygård, The Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (Norad)