Protest Mobilization, Concessions, and Policy Change in Autocracies
Journal: Deep Blue (University of Michigan)
Year: 2021

Concessions are the crucially important benefits that individuals seek when they decide to participate in collective action, yet they are poorly understood. In particular, it remains unclear why authoritarian governments, which rely on coercion to maintain control, promise concessions to protests that do not pose a revolutionary threat, despite the frequency with which this occurs. Even less is understood about the extent to which those promises are fulfilled once protest ends. I advance our und