Resisting Austerity: Resonant Solidarities and Small Wins

Chapter 6 explores resistance from the perspective of its capacity to deplete the governability of austere neoliberalism, construct solidarities, incubate alternative political economies in local state and civil society, and channel particularistic grievances into a more generalised anti-neoliberal or anti-capitalist politics. It highlights three ways in which resistance to austere neoliberalism acts positively in and against neoliberal regime politics. First, in the specific case of Barcelona, resistance propelled anti-austerity forces into office and consolidated municipalist regime capacity through discourses, practices and mobilisations around international solidarity, anti-racism and feminisation. Second, the chapter discusses numerous instances in which acts of resistance serve to politicize and reconstitute civil society forces organising against austere neoliberalism. Third, it identifies significant trends towards political generalisation, where specific grievances give rise to systemic grievances and critique.

Consolidating Neoliberal Austerity Regimes

Chapters 4 and 5 turn from state rescaling to coalitions among state, market and civil society actors, and the urban regime configurations that have arisen, or been challenged, in the post-crisis period. Chapter 4 explores the four cities in which regime consolidation was occurring around the amplification of austere neoliberalism: Athens, Baltimore, Dublin and Leicester. Though the cities vary significantly in size and influence, in each case the persistent lack, and further diminution, of local political capacity contributed to the recuperation of the municipality and its ostensibly centre-left political leaders. Multi-scalar regime politics contributes to rendering neoliberal austerity governable and to disorganising and disrupting contentious elements within civil society.

An Interest-Based Theory of Religion and Support for Democracy

This chapter presents a new theory of religion, sectarian interests, and regime preferences. Religious behaviors shape regime preferences, and do so through a sectarian lens. Communal religious practice heightens the intensity of sectarian identity, and in doing so, frames regime politics as a group issue. Depending on the interests of the group with respect to democracy (namely, the rights and privileges that a group would gain or lose in the event of democratization), communal prayer may have pro- or anti-democratic effects. A number of potential benefits and threats may accompany democracy; certain groups may gain or lose political voice, while others may benefit or suffer due to economic redistribution. In either case, group interests help to predict when religion will enhance support for democracy---and when it will do just the opposite.

Electoral Activism in Iran: A Mechanism for Political Change

Scholars of electoral authoritarianism contend that elections make autocratic regimes more durable, while scholarship on democratization states that authoritarian elections can lead to electoral revolutions and regime change. In this article, we argue that these two lenses occlude smaller instances of activism during election periods and the influence that this activism has on bringing about gradual political change. To build our argument, we draw on two presidential elections held in Iran in 2009 and 2013. We show how grassroots activists use elections to abort gains made by hardliners, push centrist and moderate candidates toward more reformist and democratic stances, promote issues that would otherwise be considered beyond the pale of formal regime politics, and encourage solidarity and opposition coalition building.

Patriotism without Patriots? Perm΄-36 and Patriotic Legitimation in Russia

This article examines the takeover of the Perm’-36 Gulag museum as emblematic of the dynamics of patriotic legitimation in Russia. The museum was dedicated to preserving the memory of the victims of Soviet political repression and it grew in popularity into the 2000s, emerging as an opposition platform and target for self-styled patriots who accused it of distorting Soviet history. The regional government soon joined the battle, finally forcing the museum's takeover and transforming it into a site honoring the Gulag rather than its victims. Drawing on interviews conducted with the museum's former director and scientific directors in 2015 and extensive local press materials, this analysis of the struggle over Perm’-36 demonstrates the significance of patriotism in sustaining the regional government's attacks even in the absence of federal patronage. The findings thus challenge prevailing understandings of authoritarian regime politics as driven primarily by patronage and power-maximizing elites.

Armenia and Azerbaijan

The Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict is the longest-running dispute in Eurasia. This study looks beyond tabloid tropes of ‘frozen conflict’ or ‘Russian land-grab’, to unpack both unresolved territorial issues left over from the 1990s and the strategic rivalry that has built up around them since then. Unstable and overlapping conceptions of homeland have characterised the Armenian and Azerbaijani republics since their first emergence in 1918. Seventy years of incorporation into the Soviet Union did not resolve these issues. As they emerged from the Soviet collapse in 1991, Armenians and Azerbaijanis fought for sovereignty over Nagorny Karabakh, leading to its secession from Azerbaijan, the deaths of more than 25,000 people and the forced displacement of more than a million more. Since then, the conflict has evolved into an ‘enduring rivalry’, a particularly intractable form of long-term militarised competition between two states. Combining perspectives rarely found in a single volume, the study shows how these outcomes became intractably embedded within the regime politics, strategic interactions and international linkages of post-war Armenia and Azerbaijan. Far from ‘frozen’, this book demonstrates how more than two decades of dynamic conceptions of territory, shifting power relations, international diffusion and unsuccessful mediation efforts have contributed to the resilience of this stubbornly unresolved dispute – one of the most intractable of our times.

Regime Politics and Rivalry

This chapter examines the much-debated question of conflict and democratization. It argues that over its first quarter-century the Armenian-Azerbaijani rivalry was sustained by the interactions of two hybrid regimes, in which authoritarian leaders were secure enough to secure power but not to enforce unpopular compromise. It then examines the roles of informal power structures and the persistent insecurity generated by prolonged militarised competition. It argues that while the causal relationship between regime type and rivalry is complex, over the long-term insecurity has provided important resources to authoritarian regimes ‘demobilizing’ constituencies for reform and democratic change. The chapter acknowledges revolutionary changes in Armenia in 2018, while highlighting the capacity of enduring rivalries to outlast democratic openings and remain stable across mixed-regime dyads.