Wait & Wear Them Out: Why Governments Survive Anti-corruption Protests?

• In Event: Governing Autocracies in Russia and Eastern Europe

Abstract

When office-holders are confronted by mass public demonstrations they have at their disposal a wide repertoire of responses. However, much of the social movements literature has focused primarily on the “repression-concession dilemma,” as opposed to the other, more subtle responses. The fact that incumbents sometimes choose to tolerate, ignore, delay action, make only superficial concessions or otherwise refuse to engage in any substantive way with peaceful demonstration has only recently attracted scholarly attention. Moreover, the emergent literature on the topic highlights two conflicting dynamics. On one hand, incumbents who employ such tactics use attrition in a strategic manner. They place the burden on protesters to continue to sustain high levels of mobilization for long periods of time. Over time, participants in such neglected protests are likely to lose motivation and simply go home. On the other hand, these intermediate government responses could make protesters more determined to stay on the streets. This becomes more likely if the government adopts a dismissive, condescending, or insulting attitude. Why then do politicians in power decide wait out mass public discontent? To answer the question, the present article evaluates the nascent scholarship on the politics of ignoring protests with a new case from Southeastern Europe – Bulgaria’s 2020-2021 anti-corruption protests. The paper presents a typology of intermediate incumbent responses that fall in the range between accommodation and repression. It maps out office-holders’ responses to the protests and shows why they successfully deployed two distinct tactics – ignoring and attrition.

Author

• Nina Simeonova Barzachka, College of the Holy Cross