Divided they fall: The management and manipulation of political opposition.

Abstract

This dissertation examines the question of when opposition elites use the threat or mobilization of masses to press for changes in closed political systems. It rejects the common notion that there is a simple relationship between an increase in mass discontent and pressures for political liberalization. Instead, it argues that the likelihood that opposition elites make demands upon incumbent political elites depends not only on the level of mass discontent but also upon the political environment within which these elites act. That is, the extent to which opposition elites are willing to mobilize the masses depends upon the relationships between various opposition elites, as well as upon their relationships with the incumbent regime and with the masses themselves. Furthermore, this dissertation emphasizes that incumbent elites, in all types of regimes, help to create and to shape these political relationships. Incumbents can exacerbate the divisions existing between various political opponents by allowing some opposition groups to become stronger and weakening others. They also manipulate the incentive structures that opposition elites face when deciding whether or not to demand political change by admitting some opponents into the formal political system and excluding others. The incumbent elites' choices in shaping the political environment are enormously important, though too often overlooked. They are also, in part, responses to earlier pressures from political opponents. Past reactions to political pressures have an immense impact on the level and type of political opposition which elites face in the future. The dissertation uses the method of structured comparison to examine the question of when pressures for political change become likely. It uses a formal model of opposition-government interactions to derive hypotheses about when political elites will exploit increasing discontent, mobilizing protests to demand political change. The dissertation then uses this model to examine the likelihood of increased political mobilization in the cases of Morocco, Jordan, and Egypt during the economic crises of the 1980s. Morocco and Jordan are explored in detail, illustrating the model's hypotheses. The cases Egypt and Israel provide confidence that the model generalizes across regime types.