The Politics of Protest in Hybrid Regimes
Managing Dissent in Post-Communist Russia

This book shows how one high-profile hybrid regime manages political competition in the workplace and in the streets in Russia.

Graeme B. Robertson (Author)

9780521118750, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 20 December 2010

304 pages, 20 b/w illus. 20 tables
23.6 x 16.5 x 2 cm, 0.56 kg

“In The Politics of Protest in Hybrid Regimes, Graeme Robertson has made a substantial contribution to our understanding of the interplay between ruling elites and popular protest in hybrid regimes. Employing a unique set of Russian Interior Ministry reports on strikes and protests in the late Yeltsin period as well as evidence from the Putin era, Robertson demonstrates that three sets of factors—the organizational environment for associations, the strategies used by political elites to mobilize the public, and the nature of intra-regime political competition—explain the variation in the level of popular protest across time and space. Robertson's argument has major implications for a broad range of contemporary regimes.”
—Thomas F. Remington, Emory University

Since the end of the Cold War, more and more countries feature political regimes that are neither liberal democracies nor closed authoritarian systems. Most research on these hybrid regimes focuses on how elites manipulate elections to stay in office, but in places as diverse as Bolivia, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Serbia, Thailand, Ukraine and Venezuela, protest in the streets has been at least as important as elections in bringing about political change. The Politics of Protest in Hybrid Regimes builds on previously unpublished data and extensive fieldwork in Russia to show how one high-profile hybrid regime manages political competition in the workplace and in the streets. More generally, the book develops a theory of how the nature of organizations in society, state strategies for mobilizing supporters, and elite competition shape political protest in hybrid regimes.

1. Introduction
2. Protest and regimes: organizational ecology, mobilization strategies and elite competition
3. Protest and regime in Russia
4. The geography of strikes
5. A time for trouble
6. Elections and the decline of protest
7. Vladimir Putin and defeat-proofing the system
8. Protest, repression and order from below
9. Implications for Russia and elsewhere.

Subject Areas: Comparative politics [JPB], Politics & government [JP]