CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2016
| Author | Urazova, Dinara |
|---|---|
| Title | "Out with the Gang!": Mass Mobilization in Ukraine's Euromaidan |
| Summary | This thesis scrutinizes regime explanations of protests in competitive authoritarianism by examining the patterns of mobilization and organization of Ukraine’s Revolution of Dignity, also known as the Euromaidan. While literature on competitive authoritarianism usually views successful opposition to an autocrat as a consolidated agent, the present theory-based case study of the Euromaidan demonstrates that the opposition to the government of President Viktor Yanukovych was not consolidated or united. Following the framework of Sidney Tarrow, the organization and mobilization of the Euromaidan is compared to two prototypical models of organizing contentious action: the hierarchical Social Democratic Model and the loose and participatory democratic Anarchist Model. The findings suggest that the competitive aspect of Ukrainian authoritarianism led to popular dissatisfaction, which made elite-led hierarchical mobilization unlikely. In other words, competitive authoritarianism provided an opportunity structure, which the masses successfully used both to challenge the regime and to bypass the opposition elites, organizing their contention in a way that was to a large degree Anarchist. Where previous research often explained the Revolution of Dignity in terms of regime instability, this study aims to suggest that it was an anti-systemic outburst of the masses. |
| Supervisor | Béla Greskovits |
| Department | Political Science MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2016/urazova_dinara.pdf |
Visit the CEU Library.
© 2007-2021, Central European University