Many of the classic works on democratization saw popular protests as, at best, intervening or secondary factors in larger structural or elite negotiation processes. However, from the 1980s through the Arab Spring uprisings, there have been many cases in which nonviolent civil resistance was central to the fall of authoritarian regimes. The literature is starting to take popular protests more seriously, as shown in works such as those by Stephan Haggard and Robert R. Kaufman (Dictators and Democrats: Masses, Elites, and Regime Change, 2016) and Jan Teorell (Determinants of Democratization, 2010). Still, as Jonathan Pinckney points out in From Dissent to Democracy: The Promise and Perils of Civil Resistance Transitions, the literature on democratization typically does not deal specifically with civil resistance as a mode of transition, and most works on civil resistance campaigns do not offer a full analysis of their effects on ensuing regimes. Pinckney builds on both literatures to provide the most extensive research to date on civil resistance transitions (CRTs), in which protest and other forms of nonviolent resistance play a major role in regime transitions. He provides a systematic analysis of the effect of civil resistance on regime outcomes and also offers a theoretical and empirical analysis of why some CRTs have more democratic outcomes than others.

With regard to theory, Pinckney argues that CRTs change the dynamic of transitions from authoritarian regimes by undermining the cohesion of the previous ruling coalition and by providing a counterweight to authoritarian hardliners’ threat of a coup. Furthermore, he asserts that the influence of CRTs is not restricted to campaigns of protest but continues through three mechanisms. First, the leaders mechanism refers to the elevation through civil resistance of leaders who favor democracy, such as Lech Walesa and Vaclav Havel. Second, civil resistance is argued to enhance norms of consensus-based decision-making and peaceful dispute resolution, which Pinckney calls the norms mechanism. Third, through the power mechanism, civil resistance itself provides a sense of political efficacy and tactics that can be used in the future in opposition against governmental abuses.

Although there is reason to believe that CRTs have a democratizing effect, they do not always have this effect in practice. Pinckney’s explanation for these different outcomes constitutes the key theoretical contribution of this book. He maintains that two things can go wrong with CRTs. First, they can experience too much demobilization following the civil resistance campaign. In that case, the check on abuse of power has been defanged. Second, civil resistance can be perverted by maximalism in which direct action is used for destructive partisan ends, such as refusing to acknowledge electoral losses or trying to force the resignation of elected governments. This is certainly relevant to cases like Thailand, Bangladesh, and, more recently, Bolivia, in which hyperpartisanship and dueling street mobilizations have made democratic governance and orderly transfers of powerful difficult. Following the venerable tradition in comparative politics of the two-by-two typology, Pinckney theorizes that transitions with high mobilization and low maximalism will result in democracies, high mobilization combined with high maximalism leads to fractious semi-democracy, low mobilization and low maximalism result in elite semi-democracy, and low mobilization and high maximalism are likely to lead to autocracy.

Pinckney analyzes political regime transitions that begin when an authoritarian or colonial regime breaks down and that can end with the establishment of a democratic or another authoritarian regime. Based largely on existing data sources, this exercise identifies 315 political transitions that occurred between 1945 and 2011. Of these, 78 are identified as CRTs, based on the presence during the transition of nonviolent resistance campaigns that have certain features. The first major analysis of the book examines the regime outcomes of all 315 transitions. Here, CRTs are found to have substantially more democratic outcomes than non-CRTs, controlling for modernization, Western linkage, democratic neighbors, and previous levels of democracy. Pinckney then focuses on the 78 CRTs and shows that higher mobilization is associated with substantially higher levels of democracy, whereas high maximalism is associated with much lower levels of democracy.

The author makes a strong case for the importance of civil resistance transitions, but the criteria for identifying them are vague, raising some questions. For example, why is Yemen’s transition in 2011 considered a CRT but not Syria’s transition starting that same year? Furthermore, when we look at the CRTs identified, cases in which civil resistance forced the ouster of a regime, such as Czechoslovakia in 1989 or Tunisia in 2011, are included alongside cases in which civil resistance was part of a more complex negotiated transition. For example, the transition in Brazil, which is the case chosen to represent the CRT-to-democracy causal pathway, is generally considered to have been started by reformist military leaders (Scott Mainwaring, “The Transition to Democracy in Brazil,” Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs 28 [1], 1986; Wendy Hunter, Eroding Military Influence in Brazil: Politicians against Soldiers, 1997). This is not consistent with the first sentence in the conclusion that “this book has examined democratization in transitions initiated by non-violent resistance” (p. 145). Massive protests did occur in Brazil, but the largest campaign focused on moving from indirect presidential elections, preferred by the military, to direct elections, yet protests failed to change the electoral process. I agree with Pinckney that these protests did influence the transition process, but this is still different from initiating the transition or ousting dictators. Haggard and Kaufman (2016), in their analysis of transitions with mass mobilization, distinguish between a direct displacement path and a negotiated path. This would have been interesting to study in this book.

Pinckney complements the quantitative, large-N analysis with country case studies chosen to investigate the effects of mobilization and maximalism on the quality of democracy. Nepal is a case of high mobilization and maximalism resulting in a fractious semi-democracy. Zambia is chosen as a case of low mobilization and low maximalism leading to an elite semi-democracy. Finally, Brazil is examined as a case of high mobilization and low maximalism leading to a genuine democracy. Nepal and Zambia are effective cases to use to illustrate the processes and outcomes posited in the theory. However, as mentioned earlier, one may question the use of Brazil as an illustrative case because democratization there was not initiated by nonviolent resistance. Furthermore, Brazil is an uncommon case in which human rights abuses actually worsened after democratization, according to the Political Terror Scale (Mark Gibney et al., The Political Terror Scale 1976–2019, http://www.politicalterrorscale.org). Thus Brazil may not be the best choice for a model case. Moreover, it would have been useful to compare a CRT case with a non-CRT case and then examine the three causal mechanisms proposed for CRTs. Yet the author deserves credit for conducting interviews with participants in civil resistance and politics, which greatly enrich the case studies.

Despite these points of criticism, From Dissent to Democracy provides convincing evidence of the democratizing effects of civil resistance transitions. It also proposes new and interesting theory on the aspects of CRTs that have especially democratizing effects. This book represents an advance on this important topic, one that also points the way to new questions for future research.