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" Repression and Rebellion in the Shadow of Foreign Intervention "
Cebul, Matthew Douglas
Monteiro, Nuno
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Latin Dissertation
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| Language of Document
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English
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| Record Number
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1106456
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| Doc. No
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TLpq2394916072
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| Main Entry
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Cebul, Matthew Douglas
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Monteiro, Nuno
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| Title & Author
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Repression and Rebellion in the Shadow of Foreign Intervention\ Cebul, Matthew DouglasMonteiro, Nuno
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| College
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Yale University
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| Date
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2019
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| student score
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2019
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| Degree
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Ph.D.
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| Page No
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237
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| Abstract
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This dissertation investigates two puzzling aspects of mass resistance to autocratic regimes: (1) why does opposition mobilization sometimes persist despite extreme repression; and (2) why do some resistance movements remain nonviolent, while others embrace armed rebellion? Whereas existing scholarship attributes variation in high risk-mobilization to a number of domestic factors, I direct attention to the international environment in which contentious politics occurs. I argue that the possibility of external engagement affects the strategic calculations of activists confronting violent autocrats, linking international politics to strategic interactions at the local level. In particular, I theorize a troubling relationship: because the expectation of foreign support encourages persistent nonviolent mobilization even against violent autocracies, movements emboldened by the promise of external support are more likely to experience excessive exposure to repression, and are consequently at elevated risk of violent radicalization. I then conduct a process-tracing analysis of the 2011 Syrian Revolution that demonstrates the theorized mechanisms at work, illuminating how international influences shaped the Syrian opposition’s trajectory from absolute quiescence to sustained nonviolent mobilization and ultimately to armed rebellion. To do so, I marshal original evidence from nine months of fieldwork in Lebanon and Turkey, including 130 in-depth interviews with Syrian activists and militants, an online activist survey, and interviews with US officials, as well as a wealth of other primary and secondary sources on the Syrian conflict. I find that Syrian activists’ expectations for foreign support were grounded in their foundational beliefs about US unipolarity, the commitment of the US-led international order to human rights, and increased protest visibility facilitated by modern information and communications technology (ICT). I then find that these expectations encouraged months of persistent nonviolent mobilization even as Assad intensified repression, sowing the seeds of the movement’s eventual escalation to armed rebellion.
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International relations
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Middle Eastern studies
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Political science
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