Funding Nonviolent Resistance : Understanding Variation in Democratic Outcomes After Nonviolent Campaigns

Sammanfattning: Previous research has found that nonviolent campaigns are conducive for democratization, but variation in democratic outcomes still remains a puzzle. I address this research gap by analyzing whether democracy assistance that promotes political participation, civic political culture, and enabling environment for civil society before and during nonviolent campaigns can help explain why some countries democratize after regime changes initiated by nonviolent campaigns while other countries do not. I argue that sustained democracy assistance help maintain mass mobilization and build democratic institutions after the old regime has been removed. By using the method of structured focused comparison, I investigate based on data from USAID and OECD what kind of democracy assistance Tunisia and Egypt received before and during their nonviolent campaigns. I find that neither Tunisia nor Egypt to any great extent received the kind of sustained democracy assistance I hypothesized could impact democratization. I therefore conclude that it seems unlikely that democracy assistance had the kind of significant impact that could explain the different outcomes in Tunisia and Egypt. Lastly, I discuss how research on nonviolent campaigns could inform policymaking and contribute to designing more strategic democracy assistance in the future.