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Pocket Protests: Rhetorical Coercion and the Micropolitics of Collective Action in Semiauthoritarian Regimes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 June 2011

Jason M. K. Lyall
Jason M. K. Lyall
Affiliation:
Princeton University, jlyall@princeton.edu
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Abstract

This article examines how repression in semiauthoritarian regimes affects collective action by comparing antiwar protesting during Russia's first (1994–96) and second (1999–) Chechen wars. Vladimir Putin's creeping authoritarianism acts as a "natural experiment" where we can study collective action before, during, and after the introduction of restrictive measures. Two key findings emerge. First, despite the Kremlin's increasingly heavy hand, antiwar actions have grown in size and frequency over the course of Putin's tenure. Second, the movement's failure to replicate its Yeltsin-era success in forcing a peace, albeit temporary, in Chechnya is due to organizational culture, not state repression. Indeed, the antiwar movement's prevailing cultural norms have undercut mobilization by locking activists into using symbolic appeals that ring hollow among Russians. Activists are thus unable to wield latent antiwar sentiment as a cudgel to entrap the Kremlin into reversing course. This argument is supported by a protest data set, primary documents, interviews, and participant observation.

Type
Research Article
Information
World Politics , Volume 58 , Issue 3 , April 2006 , pp. 378 - 412
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 2006

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44 This parodies the Soviet slogan “Communism is Soviet power plus the electrification of the entire country.”

45 This remark appeared as the “quote of the day” in September 25,1999, editions of Komsomol'skaia pravda, Nezavisimaia gazeta, and Novye Izvestiia, among others.

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47 This may be true of most, if not all, Russian activists and not simply of antiwar protestors. See Sarah Mendelson and Theodore Gerber, “Local Activist Culture and Transnational Diffusion” (Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, Washington, D.C., 2005).

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50 In St. Petersburg the police have taken to videotaping these pickets, ostensibly because they attract a fairly high proportion of young demonstrators who are affiliated with anarchist movements.

51 Totals derived from weekly organization records as well as from participant observation.

52 There is an implicit counterfactual here: if activists updated their slogans to match mainstream views, they would recruit at a faster rate with higher success than if they continue their current efforts that appeal to a much narrower segment of the populace.

53 Maskhadov, once the president of Chechnya and political figurehead of the independence movement, was killed in March 2005 by Russian forces.

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67 Available at http://www.hro.org/army.

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