Abstract

Over half of the world’s population lives under non-democratic rule, where citizen preferences are often ignored and institutions such as independent courts are generally absent (Gehlbach et al., 2016). In these regimes, elections do not serve as a viable mechanism for regime change: incumbents can, in principle, always rely on electoral fraud and declare victory. In addition, although opposition parties often exist, they face severe constraints in reaching the public due to state repression, slanted media environments, and limited access to resources and funding. While recent scholarship has increasingly focused on authoritarian politics, much of this work centers on incumbents’ tools, such as propaganda, repression, and electoral manipulation, or elite strategies such as coups. Although there is growing attention to protests and citizen behavior, the role of other non-governmental actors, especially opposition parties and foreign actors, and their interactions with protest dynamics remains underexplored. My dissertation contributes to the study of non-democracies by placing non-government actors at the center of analysis. Specifically, across the three papers, I examine how internal dynamics, such as opposition strategies, and external factors, such as war threats and foreign support, shape mass mobilization. Non-democratic regimes are marked by persistent external threats such as war. As a result, citizens in such contexts must weigh not only the risks of repression but also the possibility of foreign invasion when deciding whether to protest. Thus, in “The Protest Dilemma: The Effect of Threat of War in Sustaining Non-Democratic Regime” (co-authored with Mariam Malashkhia), we develop a model of how the enemy’s war decision and the incumbent’s use of propaganda influence the citizens’ protest decision. We show that the threat of war deters protests, thus, the domestic challenge to the incumbent’s hold on power depends on the conditions faced by the enemy. As a result, citizens, if left on their own, must wait until the adversary is constrained in its ability to wage war, a process that may never occur. Therefore, if the international community is committed to facilitating regime change, its primary support should focus on minimizing the threat of war. Our analysis further reveals that citizen mobilization hinges on the opposition being perceived as significantly more capable than the incumbent. Hence, opposition groups must clearly differentiate themselves from the incumbent to galvanize protest. So, tactics that challenge incumbent’s narratives or disrupt regime legitimacy — such as refusal to participate in elections or challenging the election results (Magaloni, 2010; Beaulieu, 2014; Hafner-Burton et al., 2018) — may prove more effective in such environments. Moreover, we show that when the enemy is not more likely to invade if protests are sufficiently large, an increased war threat further suppresses protest. This helps explain why regimes use propaganda to exaggerate the risk of war. In contrast, when the enemy seeks to prevent regime change, citizens face a dilemma: while protest increases the likelihood of achieving a better government, it raises the probability of invasion. Consequently, when individuals highly value peace, they prefer to maintain the status quo rather than gamble on improved governance. Interestingly, however, in this case, a higher threat of war can sometimes increase protest. Thus, propaganda is not a universally effective tool for protest suppression. Beyond external threats, a defining feature of non-democracies is that opposition faces a significantly uneven playing field. Specifically, challenger parties, though often present and participating in elections, face significant constraints in reaching the public (Cunha et al., 2022), and the set of strategies available to them is highly limited (Bunce and Wolchik, 2010). Thus, in “Politics of Non Democracies: Fraud, Post-Election Boycotts, and Protests”, co-authored with Mariam Malashkhia, we propose a model that studies the unexplored interconnectedness between opposition strategies, citizen behavior, and the incumbent’s decision. We show that a boycott — forfeiting parliamentary seats — can serve as a powerful signal of the opposition’s ability, thereby mobilizing large-scale protests. This new information ex- plains why citizens may support the regime one day but protest the next. Thus, in contexts where the opposition faces public outreach constraints, a post-election boycott becomes one of the few available and effective strategies. Moreover, our model offers a new perspective on the strategic role of fraud —- shaping post-election dynamics by affecting the challenger’s incentive to boycott and subsequent protest. Additionally, we argue that peaceful transitions arise when credible threats of protests are coupled with parliamentary elections. Building on the Politics of Non Democracies paper, in “The Role of International Support in Facilitating Non-Democratic Regime Change,” I show that providing international support to the opposition to boycott the election outcome can sometimes backfire. Specifically, international assistance enables even weaker opposition to contest election results, thereby reducing the informational value of a boycott, and hence sometimes failing to galvanize large-scale mobilization. Furthermore, a pro-change donor optimally aims to strike a balance: make boycotts sufficiently costly to ensure only strong challengers engage in them, yet not so prohibitive as to suppress boycotts altogether. By contrast, a pro-regime donor may offer either no support, making boycotts prohibitively costly, or full support, making them frequent and uninformative. Thus, international support for the opposition does not necessarily signal pro-change intentions. Finally, I show that international support may inadvertently increase the level of fraud.

Committee Chair

Stephen Ryan

Committee Members

Justin Fox, Amy Pond; George-Levi Gayle; Keith Schnakenberg; M. Bumin Yenmez

Degree

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Author's Department

Economics

Author's School

Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

Document Type

Dissertation

Date of Award

4-21-2026

Language

English (en)

Author's ORCID

https://orcid.org/0009-0007-2048-4304

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Economics Commons

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