Sarah Jajjawi
Research Mentor(s): Mark Tessler
Mentor Department: Political Science
Authors:
Session: Session 6 (3:00pm – 3:50pm)
Presentation Type: Poster 64
Abstract
Through this study we are attempting to find the core reason or reasons that individuals in an authoritarian society may decide to participate in political protests. While authoritarian regimes are all peculiar in functions and nature they seem to almost always experience mass civil unrest and mobilization of their civilians, but the question of why these individuals decide it is worth it is not answered as an exact science and therefore our search aims to uncover the fixed factors that motivate individuals to take part in protests. This is important to understand as these regime systems tend to have more repressive forces and such participation in movements against the government could yield negative consequences for citizens, and therefore a costly participation is worth looking into. This issue could extend to a better understanding for political leaders in their policy-making decisions, as well as aid in linking local issues to broader geopolitical narratives that could over time influence global norms and governance techniques. The immediate answer that one may find to our question is that grievances, political and economic, drive people to protest in restrictive regimes, and while we predict that this is true to an extent we also believe that there is much to be found beyond this arguably generic answer. Perhaps the grievances have their own drivers, perhaps that grievances are not enough, or perhaps grievances are not as big of a driving force as commonly agreed upon by the mass public. The study aims to therefore unpack all these options and analyze the narratives that are available about what drives people in authoritarian regimes to protest in a then larger endeavor to analyze the extent of their validity in current age.
