Doctoral Dissertation Research: The Popular Roots of Counterrevolution

Princeton University, Princeton NJ

Investigators

Abstract

This project considers the phenomenon of counterrevolution, examining how counterrevolutionary challenges typically emerge and when they are most likely to succeed in toppling a new revolutionary regime. Counterrevolutions represent tremendously consequential political events; yet, as scholars are increasingly recognizing, they have seldom been considered systematically in rigorous social scientific accounts. This project therefore stands to make a substantial contribution by developing and testing a theory of counterrevolution. It will draw on cross-national data from the full universe of revolutions in the 20th and 21st centuries, as well as interview and protest data from the case of Egypt, which experienced a political revolution in 2011 and a counterrevolution in 2013. Moreover, the project will generate several broader impacts. First, it will build practical and actionable knowledge to help policymakers in supporting peaceful transitions to democracy following revolutions and preventing nascent democratic projects from being cut short by counterrevolutions. Second, it will develop new resources and capacity for quantitative empirical research on the Arab World, including by training two Arab research assistants in rigorous data collection methods and by building a dataset of contentious events in Egypt. Third, it will facilitate dialogue between Egypt's polarized political factions, helping to build a foundation on which political reconciliation and a more stable and inclusive governance system in Egypt might be achieved. This project will address two questions: Under what conditions do revolutionary regimes come to be challenged by counterrevolutions? And when do such counterrevolutionary challenges succeed? A counterrevolution is defined as an effort in the aftermath of a successful revolution to restore a version of the pre-revolutionary political regime. Contrary to existing accounts of counterrevolution, which focus on the unilateral actions of elites from the old regime, this dissertation proposes that overthrowing revolution requires a popular base. Specifically, it is argued that successful counterrevolutions are brought about by a coalition of coercive forces from the old regime and disaffected reformists in the revolutionary coalition itself, with the support of broad segments of society whose members grow weary of revolutionary change. The research leverages quantitative and qualitative research strategies at both the cross-national and sub-national level. It first considers the case of Egypt, which experienced a political revolution in 2011 and a counterrevolution in 2013. Using qualitative process tracing of interview data and quantitative analysis of protest events in the year preceding the counterrevolution, it examines the processes and mechanisms that brought about counterrevolution in this paradigmatic case. The case-specific research will be complemented with analysis of a quantitative dataset that documents which successful revolutions through the 20th and 21st centuries were challenged and overthrown by counterrevolutions. Finally, several shadow cases of successful and unsuccessful counterrevolution will be examined. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.