Abstract How does radicality affect public support for protest? Despite a long-standing scholarly debate about the demobilizing power of radicality, empirical evidence beyond the use of violent action and left-libertarian social movements remains scarce. Therefore, this article advances the debate by examining the effects of two forms of radicality, violent forms of protest and radical protest actors, in the context of a right-authoritarian movement. We employ a novel and comprehensive multistep research design to study these theoretical expectations, integrating original survey and natural experimental evidence. Empirically, we draw on the case of the anti-containment protests in Germany during the COVID-19 pandemic, emblematic of the rise of right-authoritarian social movements in contemporary democracies. We examine the role of demonstrator-instigated violence and radical-right involvement in demobilizing sympathizers and likely participants. The empirical findings show that, in contrast to left-libertarian movements, individuals strongly committed to the cause are likely to continue to take to the streets regardless of the presence of violence and radical-right actors. The findings suggest adverse diminishing demobilization effects of radicality in contemporary democracies, which are less pronounced for individuals close to right-authoritarian movements.
Abstract Drone strikes against militant groups have become a central counterterrorism tool, yet their effectiveness remains debated. We use weather-based instruments and a major drone-base closure to identify the causal effect of Central Intelligence Agency drone strikes in North Waziristan, Pakistan, on suicide bombings nationwide during 2008–2016. Our instrumental variables strategy improves on recent work by combining cloud cover interacted with precipitation—which directly impedes camera-based targeting—with a base closure providing qualitatively different variation. Focusing exclusively on suicide bombings allows us to test specific theoretical mechanisms and provide evidence no existing study offers: quantification of the total programme effect, heterogeneity between decapitation and non-decapitation strikes, and systematic analysis of attack target types. We find each drone strike causes approximately one additional suicide bombing within the subsequent month, with 18%–23% of all suicide bombings during this period causally attributable to the drone programme. Strikes eliminating militant leaders provoke reactions roughly 8 times stronger than ordinary strikes. These reaction attacks predominantly target security installations, not civilians, contradicting theories emphasizing capacity loss or undisciplined violence and instead supporting our proposed mechanism: militant groups strategically “green light” pre-prepared suicide attacks as face-saving responses to authority challenges. We formalize these predictions as four testable hypotheses—blowback effects, decapitation amplification, strategic targeting, and rapid response—all of which receive empirical support. Our findings complement recent evidence that drone strikes increase terrorism and that leadership targeting disrupts organizational control, while providing novel evidence on suicide bombing dynamics, decapitation heterogeneity, and strategic target selection. The results suggest policymakers should anticipate month-long vulnerability windows after strikes, particularly following leadership kills, and harden security targets rather than assume militants will shift to softer civilian targets.
Universities as the main institutions of higher education are often assumed to be driving forces of democratization and political liberalization. In autocratic countries, political protest is one of the few ways by which political authority can be challenged, and research has shown that universities often constitute focal points for these protests. However, which universities are particularly likely to see protest? In this paper, we focus on international scientific collaboration. We argue that academic collaboration with universities abroad can facilitate the exchange of information and ideas that challenge autocratic rule. We test our expectations in a preregistered disaggregated study, combining data on academic institutions in autocracies, large publication databases and protest event data. Our findings show that the presence of institutions with a high degree of international scientific collaboration is associated with more protest at a location. However, we find no evidence for our expectation that collaboration with democracies, or in particular disciplines (social sciences), matters more. Overall, our results suggest that beyond the impact on research itself, international academic collaboration can have important political implications in nondemocratic environments.
Earlier literature has found that individuals with more liberal values are less willing to fight for their country in a potential conflict. Because liberal values emphasize self-enhancement and minimize in-group versus out-group distinctions, sacrificing one's life for the nation may appear unnatural. However, these studies have neglected how international conditions shape the attitudes of liberal individuals. In many Western countries, "willingness to fight" has often meant participation in foreign wars rather than defence against direct aggression. This paper argues that while liberal values are negatively correlated with willingness to fight when the state experiences a high degree of security, liberal individuals have a high degree of conditional fight-willingness when confronted with an external threat. A potential conflict will have large consequences for their ability to engage in the goals coming from such values, something that liberal individuals would want to protect. Using a combination of the World Values Survey and a dyadic latent hostility measure, the analysis shows that in threatened countries liberal values exert a positive and substantial effect on individuals' willingness to fight. This conditional effect is strongest in autocratic states, whereas in democracies the threat level must be considerably higher for the same positive relationship to emerge. However, more than 64 country-years in the sample fall into the high-threat category. For small states facing external danger, this dynamic constitutes a crucial component of military capability in an increasingly threatening international system.
Existing research has demonstrated that regimes with access to aid and other forms of support may be better able to forestall challenges to their rule, become more institutionally entrenched, and thus survive longer. Occasionally, however, the donors that provide such assistance withdraw it suddenly. This is often to signal disapproval over some action or to coerce the recipient in some way. Surprisingly, little work has been done toward understanding the effects of these sudden shocks to foreign assistance on the political stability of the recipient country. If one of the primary mechanisms through which external sources of support affect survival is the ability to prevent challenges to the regime, it follows that sudden negative deviations in such support should have significant consequences for regime stability. Aid-especially military aid-is often highly strategic: donors reward with aid those they wish to keep in power, and withdraw it from regimes they wish to punish. Aid shocks can be either deliberate or coincidental. In either case, such shocks may have destabilizing effects, as domestic actors may interpret them as signals that a coup might be welcome. Using an original measure of aid shocks, I find support for this intuition, but only in regimes without a broader security relationship with the U.S. I argue that in these cases, the security relationship deters regime opponents from moving against the government. These findings add to our knowledge of the effects of external revenue and support in regimes, and also underscore the critical role that international signals play in regime survival.
