Reneging and the subversion of protest-driven policy change in autocracies

ABSTRACTIn autocracies, low-capacity protest campaigns that lack material and political resources are common, but these weaknesses make them vulnerable to reneging – the deliberate failure to implement concessions as promised. Reneging is critical to how and whether protests actually influence policy. Why are some autocratic concessions to low-capacity campaigns undermined by reneging? I argue concessions are most likely to be implemented when they matter least for meaningfully altering policy. Concessions that provide isolated conflict resolution without constraining state actors elsewhere are more likely to be implemented, while reneging affects concessions that would constrain state agents elsewhere. I find support for this argument using an original dataset of low-capacity protest campaigns in Moscow, Russia, from 2013 to 2018, which includes a novel approach to concessions data. Additionally, I show that reneging is less likely when the campaign demobilizes after the concession, though the effect on constraining concessions is limited. I also address why campaigns about some issues, like labour disputes, experience less reneging, and show that concessions from higher levels of government are just as prone to reneging as lower levels. This article advances scholarship on authoritarian responsiveness and non-violent political control by highlighting reneging as an overlooked response to protest.KEYWORDS: Authoritarianisminstitutionscollective actionprotestcredible commitmentRussia AcknowledgementsI am grateful for the feedback of two anonymous reviewers as well as Santiago Anria, Mark Beissinger, Candelaria Garay, Mai Hassan, Pauline Jones, Andrew Little, Jessica Rich, Graeme Robertson, and Tongtong Zhang, as well as participants in the 2022 authoritarianism mini-conference at WPSA and the Jordan Center – HSE University Joint Lecture Series.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 To differentiate from larger and more transformative social movements, I adopt Tilly's (2004, 3) definition of a campaign is a “sustained, organized public effort making collective claims on target authorities” linking a group of claimants (protesters), the object of their claim and a public.2 Lipsky, “Protest as a Political Resource.”3 O’Brien and Li, Rightful Resistance; Cai, Collective Resistance; Chen, Social Protest; Li, “Fragmented Authoritarianism”; and Elfstrom, “Two Steps Forward.”4 Earl, “Tanks, Tear Gas”; Davenport, “State repression”; Chenoweth and Stephan, Why Civil Resistance; and Davenport and Inman, “The State of State Repression.”5 Muller and Opp, “Rational Choice”; Lichbach, “Deterrence or Escalation?”; Cai, Collective Resistance.6 Ginkel and Smith, “So You Say.”7 Rasler, “Concessions, Repression.”8 Klein and Regan, “Dynamics of Political Protests.”9 Lust-Okar, Structuring Conflict.10 Hummel, “Sideways Concessions.”11 Guriev and Treisman, “Informational Autocrats”; Hassan et al, “Political Control.”12 Li, “A Zero-Sum Game?”.13 O’Brien and Li, Rightful Resistance; Lorentzen, “Regularizing rioting.”14 Cai, Collective Resistance; Chen, Social protest.15 Heurlin, Responsive Authoritarianism.16 Ding, “Performative Governance.”17 Brancati, “Democratic Authoritarianism.”18 Leuschner and Hellmeier, “State Concessions.”19 Greene, Moscow in Movement.20 Davenport, “State Repression”; Ritter, “Policy Disputes”; Chenoweth and Stepan, Why Civil Resistance Works; and Chenoweth et al. “State Repression.”21 Wintrobe, Political economy of dictatorship; Escribà-Folch, “Repression, Political Threats.”22 Lichbach 1987, Francisco 1995, Rasler, “Concessions, Repression”; Hess and Martin, “Repression, Backfire”; Sullivan et al., “Weight of the Past.”23 Sutton et al., “Explaining Political jiu-jitsu.”24 Rasler, “Concessions, Repression”; Lichbach, The Rebel's Dilemma; Tarrow, Power in Movement; Chen, Social Protest.25 Gamson, Strategy of Social Protest; Chenoweth and Stephan, Why civil Resistance Works; Moore, “Repression of Dissent”; Carey, “Dynamic Relationship”: Pierskalla, “Protest, Deterrence, and Escalation.”26 See note 6 above.27 Klein and Regan, “Dynamics of Political Protests”; Leuschner and Hellmeier, “State Concessions.”28 North and Weingast, “Constitutions and Commitment”; Bueno de Mesquita et al., The Logic of Political Survival; Myerson, “The Autocrat's Credibility”; Magaloni, “Credible Power-Sharing”; and Svolik, Politics of Authoritarian Rule.29 Gandhi and Przeworski, “Cooperation, Cooptation, and Rebellion”, “Authoritarian Institutions”; and Boix and Svolik, “Foundations of Limited Authoritarian Government.”30 Gandhi and Lust-Okar, “Elections Under Authoritarianism”; Magaloni and Kricheli, “Political Order and One-Party Rule”; and Brancati, “Democratic Authoritarianism.”31 Acemoglu and Robinson, Economic Origins.32 See note 18 above.33 Franklin, “Contentious Challenges”; Cai, Collective Resistance; Chen, Social Protest; Heurlin, Responsive Authoritarianism; and Li, “A Zero-Sum Game?.”34 Cai, “Power Structure”35 Earl, “Political Repression”; Johnson, “State Violence.”36 della Porta, “The policing of protest.”37 Fu, Mobilizing without the masses.38 Ong, “Thugs-for-Hire.”39 Li and Elfstrom, “Does Greater Coercive Capacity.”40 Bishara, “Politics of Ignoring.”41 Kovic et al., “Digital Astroturfing”; Lee “Social Media”42 Reynolds-Stenson and Earl, “Clashes of Conscience.”43 See note 37 above.44 Teets, “Let Many Civil Societies Bloom”, Civil Society Under Authoritarianism.45 Chen et al., “Sources of Authoritarian Responsiveness.”46 Cai, Collective Resistance; Chen, Social Protest; Elfstrom, “Two Steps Forward”, Workers and Change.47 See note 13 above.48 Cai, Collective Resistance; Chen, Social Protest; and Elfstrom, Workers and Change.49 See note 16 above.50 Ibid.51 Rosenfeld, “Reevaluating the middle-class”; Tertytchnaya and Lankina, “Electoral Protests”; Dollbaum, “Protest Trajectories”; and Smyth, Elections, Protest.52 Bindman, “State, Civil Society”; Owen and Bindman, “Civic Participation.”53 Gilbert, “Crowding Out Civil Society.”54 Plantan, “Not all NGOs.”55 See note 19 above.56 Lorentzen, “Regularizing Rioting.”57 Chenoweth and Shay, NAVCO.58 Interviews with activists, Moscow, Russia, 2019.59 Liberal-democratic opposition protest news site (Marsh Nesoglasnikh, http://namarsh.ru/, RU), website for non-KPRF leftist and communist in Moscow (Kommunisti Stolitsi, http://comstol.info, RU), non-Kremlin-aligned mainstream newspaper (Kommersant, articles tagged with “Meetings and Rallies”, https://www.kommersant.ru/archive/theme/366/month/2017-12-01, RU) and a regional newswire (Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, https://www.rferl.org/z/645, 15 May 2019, ENG).60 Russia is a federation, meaning that many aspects of policy are delegated to the regional level. The data includes labour disputes with the city directly and with state-owned enterprises and major contractors, such as private construction firms whose sole or major client is the city. It excludes private labour disputes. Protests directed to the federal government, which include those about human rights, democratization and liberalization, are excluded, as well as protests about issues outside Moscow.61 Gabowitsch, Protest in Putin's Russia.62 Event types included demonstrations, marches, strikes, individual pickets, simultaneous or serial individual pickets, full pickets, sit-ins and occupations, blockades, riots, self-mutilation and hunger strikes, the mass filing of complaints, and “other” physical protest. No turnout threshold was used.63 If campaign did not hold a demonstration, march, strike or picket the variable takes the log of 1.64 “Resheno dlya vsego i vsya sozdat’ obshchestvennyy sovet, reglament kotorogo - ne yasen. Yakoby v chislo uchastnikov vklyuchat chlenov initsiativnykh grupp i aktivnykh zhiteley. Im budet predostavleno … PRAVO obsuzhdat’ voprosy s deputatami pered zasedaniyami deputatov i donosit’ do nikh mneniye zhiteley.” (“It was decided to create a public council for everything, the rules of which are not clear. Allegedly, the number of participants will include members of initiative groups and active residents. They will be given … the RIGHT to discuss issues with the deputies before the meetings of the deputies and convey to them the opinion of the inhabitants.”) (Trazumnaya 2013).65 trazumnaya, “Spasyeniye Mitino”66 “Torgovli v mitinskom parke ne budet” (“There will be no commercial facilities in Mitino Park”), Moskva Severo-Zapad, No. 1/177 of 01/20/2014, Interview with Moscow City Duma deputy Valery Skobinov.67 ‘[Z]amestitel’ mera Moskvy po voprosam gradostroitel’noy politiki i stroitel'stva Marat Khusnullin na vstreche s obshchestvennymi sovetnikami glav uprav rayonov SZAO skazal: ‘Stolichnyye vlasti otozvali razresheniye na stroitel'stvo khokkeynogo tsentra imeni Vladislava Tret’yaka na severo-zapade Moskvy’ ” (“Deputy Mayor of Moscow for Urban Policy and Construction Marat Khusnullin at a meeting with public advisers to the heads of administrations of the districts of the North-West Administrative District said: ‘The city authorities have withdrawn permission to build a hockey center named after Vladislav Tretyak in the north-west of Moscow’ ”) (Trazumnaya 2014a).68 Gerashchenko, “PPF ostalas’ v odinochesctve.”69 Ibid.70 IG Spasem Park, “IG Spasem Park procit maksimal’nyii repost!.”71 Komityet gosudarstvennogo stroitel’nogo nadzora goroda Moskvi, “V Mitino poyavitsya.”72 Wikimapia, “Stroitel’naya ploshchadka.”73 χ2 (1, N = 115) = 4.616, p = .03274 χ2 (1, N = 55) = 29.7, p = 0.0075 These models control for whether the campaign submitted a complaint to the Presidential Administration, which introduces potential collinearity, however these variables have a correlation of 0.119.76 Ledeneva, Can Russia Modernize?.77 Transparency International Russia, Min’ony khusnullina.Additional informationNotes on contributorsSasha de VogelSasha de Vogel is a post-doctoral researcher at the Authoritarian Politics Lab at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Her research focuses on authoritarianism, collective action, regime stability and repression.