Replication Data for: From Protest to Rebellion? Institutions and Protest Escalation in Autocracies.

Why does political contention induced by major exogenous shocks escalate into broad-based rebellion in some autocratic states but remain scattered and tame in others? The question has important implications for our understanding of contention under authoritarianism and, ultimately, the politics of authoritarian survival and change. While a growing body of literature has greatly advanced our knowledge in this area, existing accounts leave important unanswered puzzles such as why strongly oppositional frames come to quickly resonate with would-be demonstrators in some countries but not others, why some autocrats shoot at unarmed protesters but others use restraint, and why some rulers succeed in calming or dividing demonstrators with distributive concessions while others fail to de-escalate collective action in their territories with the same goods. My dissertation offers a new explanation for variation in protest escalation that is able to address these and other puzzles. I contend that in a given autocracy the likelihood that shock-induced protests, once begun, will escalate into mass rebellion hinges on a key aspect of autocratic design: the extent to which the hegemon institutionalizes opportunities for his popular base – the “minimal winning coalition” necessary for an uprising – to bargain with him and his intermediaries over non-strategic everyday matters, such as local status positions or distributive goods. All things equal, I argue that autocrats who do not root their power in some form of bargaining and who seek to rule by decree are most likely to face protest escalation because the top-down approach endogenously creates incentives for predatory forms of governance which alienate the popular base. I demonstrate my theory through a structured comparison of Syria and Jordan, which saw puzzlingly different protest dynamics in response to the wave of regional unrest in early 2011. Using a natural experiment and range of historical, geographical, and individual-level survey data, I show how Syrian and Jordanian state-builders' choice of dissimilar institutional-bargaining approaches in the 1960s -- a top-down non-bargaining model in Syria and a bargaining-centric strategy in Jordan -- led, over time, to systematically different relationships between the states and their rural mass constituencies prior to 2011 and how this explains the systematically different protest dynamics observed in 2011. Despite similar starting points in the 1960s, by late 2010 rural Syrians were not only more politically disaffected with their state than rural Jordanians, but also more economically independent and more unified by visceral solidarities (partly around their shared grievances against the state). The combination of political and economic alienation and strong visceral solidarities, I demonstrate, made escalation of protests in Syria more likely than in Jordan for several reasons: they rendered the Syrian mass constituency predictably more receptive to the \"rebellious\" Tunisian and Egyptian protest frames in early 2011 and more able to reach across geographic divides to mobilize a broad oppositional movement; they made it more difficult for the Syrian regime to calm protests by \"buying off\" and dividing the demonstrators with selective distributive concessions since the state's distributive goods were intrinsically less valued; and, given that they neutralized the regime's non-violent distributive policy tools, they pushed the Syrian state to fall back on violence, which added to public outrage and sped up protest mobilization and calls for regime change. I supplement these analyses with a range of rich qualitative and quantitative evidence to show why my institutions- and governance focused explanation provides a better account than popular competing explanations including, among other, the generosity of the autocrat's distributive bargain, the breadth of the autocrat's mass coalition, the strength of pre-existing civil society, supposed monarchical legitimacy, access to rents, and colonial legacies. The datasets attached here can be used to replicate the main quantitative analyses in Chapters 3-6 of the dissertation.

为何在某些威权国家中，重大外生冲击引发的政治抗争会升级为广泛的叛乱，而在另一些国家中却仅呈现分散且温和的态势？这一问题对于我们理解威权体制下的政治抗争，乃至威权存续与变革的政治逻辑，均具有重要意义。尽管日益增多的学术文献极大推动了我们在该领域的认知，但既有研究仍遗留诸多未决谜题：为何某些国家中强烈的对立框架能迅速获得潜在示威者的认同，而另一些国家却无此效果？为何部分威权统治者会向手无寸铁的示威者开枪，另一些却选择克制？为何部分统治者能借助分配性让步平息或分化示威者，而另一些统治者即便动用同类资源，也无法缓和本国境内的集体抗争行动？
本论文为抗议升级的差异提供了全新解释，能够解答上述及其他相关谜题。我认为，在特定威权国家中，冲击引发的抗议一旦发生，升级为大规模叛乱的可能性取决于威权制度设计的一个关键维度：统治者（霸权者）是否为其民众基础——即起义所需的「最小获胜联盟（minimal winning coalition）」——制度化了与自身及其代理人就非战略性日常事务（如本地身份地位或分配性资源）进行谈判的机会。
在其他条件相同的情况下，我认为，未将权力建立在某种谈判机制之上、而试图以政令治国的威权统治者，最有可能遭遇抗议升级：因为自上而下的治理模式会内生催生掠夺型治理的激励，从而疏远民众基础。我通过对叙利亚和约旦的结构化比较验证了这一理论——两国在2011年初的地区动荡浪潮中，呈现出令人费解的迥异抗议态势。
借助自然实验（natural experiment）及一系列历史、地理与个体层面调查数据，我阐述了叙利亚与约旦的建国者在1960年代选择的迥异制度性谈判路径——叙利亚采用自上而下的非谈判模式，约旦则采取以谈判为核心的策略——如何随时间推移，在2011年前塑造了两国与农村大众选民群体间系统性迥异的国家-社会关系，并由此解释了2011年两国观察到的抗议态势差异。
尽管两国在1960年代起点相似，但至2010年末，叙利亚农村民众不仅比约旦农村民众对国家的政治不满程度更高，同时在经济上更具独立性，且因发自内心的团结（部分源于共同的反国家不满）更为凝聚。我证明，政治与经济疏离感加上强烈的情感团结，使得叙利亚的抗议比约旦更易升级，原因有三：其一，这让叙利亚大众选民群体更易接受2011年初「反叛性」的突尼斯与埃及抗议框架，也更能跨越地域隔阂动员起广泛的反对运动；其二，由于国家分配的资源本身价值较低，叙利亚政权难以通过选择性分配让步收买、分化示威者以平息抗议；其三，这些因素消解了政权的非暴力分配政策工具，迫使叙利亚国家诉诸暴力，这进一步加剧了公众愤慨，加速了抗议动员与政权更迭诉求的传播。
我辅以一系列丰富的定性与定量证据补充上述分析，以说明为何以制度与治理为核心的解释，比诸多主流竞争理论（包括威权统治者分配性让步的慷慨程度、其大众联盟的广度、既有公民社会的强度、所谓的君主制合法性、租金获取渠道以及殖民遗产等）能更合理地阐释这一现象。本文附带的数据集可用于复现本论文第3至第6章中的主要定量分析内容。