MIAMI UNIVERSITY The Graduate School Certification for Approving the Dissertation We hereby approve the Dissertation of Stephen Hess Candidate for the Degree: Doctor of Philosophy ____________________________________ Director (Dr. Venelin Ganev) ____________________________________ Reader (Dr. Gulnaz Sharafutdinova) ____________________________________ Reader (Dr. Adeed Dawisha) ____________________________________ Graduate School Representative (Dr. Stanley Toops) ABSTRACT AUTHORITARIAN LANDSCAPES: STATE DECENTRALIZATION, POPULAR MOBILIZATION, AND THE INSTITUTIONAL SOURCES OF RESILIENCE IN NONDEMOCRACIES by Stephen Hess Beginning with the insight that highly-centralized state structures have historically provided a unifying target and fulcrum for the mobilization of contentious nationwide social movements, this dissertation investigates the hypothesis that decentralized state structures in authoritarian regimes impede the development of forms of popular contention sustained and coordinated on a national scale. As defined in this work, in a decentralized state, local officials assume greater discretionary control over public expenditures, authority over the implementation of government policies, and latitude in managing outbreaks of social unrest within their jurisdictions. As a result, they become the direct targets of most protests aimed at the state and the primary mediators of actions directed at third-party, non-state actors. A decentralized state therefore presents not one but a multitude of loci for protests, diminishing claimants‘ ability to use the central state as a unifying target and fulcrum for organizing national contentious movements. For this reason, decentralized autocracies are expected to face more fragmented popular oppositions and exhibit higher levels of durability than their more centralized counterparts. To examine this claim, I conduct four comparative case studies, organized into pairs of autocracies that share a common regime type but vary in terms of state decentralization. These include the single-party autocracies of Taiwan (1949-1996) and China (1949-present) and the personalist autocracies of the Philippines (1972-1986) and Kazakhstan (1991-present). This dissertation compares streams of contention in each of these sites, examining how state structures facilitate and/or impede the shift from localized and particularized forms of contention into nation-level social movements. These divergent outcomes are expected to have a powerful impact on the resilience of individual autocratic states and their likelihood of experiencing regime breakdown. AUTHORITARIAN LANDSCAPES: STATE DECENTRALIZATION, POPULAR MOBILIZATION, AND THE INSTITUTIONAL SOURCES OF RESILIENCE IN NONDEMOCRACIES A DISSERTATION Submitted to the Faculty of Miami University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Political Science by Stephen Hess Miami University Oxford, Ohio 2011 Dissertation Director: Dr. Venelin Ganev Table of Contents Chapter One: Introduction ............................................................................................................................ 1 1.1. Sources of Authoritarian Resilience .................................................................................................. 2 1.2. Contentious Politics ......................................................................................................................... 11 1.3. The Research Question .................................................................................................................... 18 1.4. Organization of the Dissertation ...................................................................................................... 24 Chapter Two: Authoritarian Landscapes .................................................................................................... 26 2.1. Defining Decentralization ................................................................................................................ 28 2.2. Functional Decentralization ............................................................................................................. 29 2.3. Decentralization of Coercion ........................................................................................................... 30 2.4. Decentralization: Causes and Outcomes .......................................................................................... 32 2.5. Decentralization, Institutional Landscaping, and Popular Mobilization .......................................... 35 Chapter Three: Single-Party Regimes......................................................................................................... 43 3.1. Cases in Comparison ........................................................................................................................ 44 Chapter Four: Taiwan ................................................................................................................................. 54 4.1. Functional Centralization ................................................................................................................. 54 Table 4.1. Expenditures as a Percentage of Total Government Expenditures (1980-1987) ............... 56 4.2. Centralization of Coercion ............................................................................................................... 58 4.3. Patterns of Popular Contention ........................................................................................................ 58 4.4. Environmental Contention and the 1986 Lukang Rebellion ............................................................ 65 4.5. Labor Contention and Working Class Activism .............................................................................. 68 4.6. 1986: A Political Breakthrough ....................................................................................................... 73 Chapter Five: China .................................................................................................................................... 77 5.1. Functional Decentralization ............................................................................................................. 78 5.2. Decentralization of Coercion ........................................................................................................... 80 5.3. Patterns of Popular Contention ........................................................................................................ 82 5.4. Labor Contention ............................................................................................................................. 85 5.5. November 2008 Taxi Driver Strikes ................................................................................................ 88 5.6. Summer 2010 Factory Protests ........................................................................................................ 91 5.7. Environmental Contention ............................................................................................................... 94 5.8. Localized Protest and Authoritarian Resilience ............................................................................... 99 Chapter Six: Personalist Regimes ............................................................................................................. 103 ii 6.1. Cases in Comparison ...................................................................................................................... 106 Chapter Seven: The Philippines ................................................................................................................ 113 7.1. Functional Centralization ............................................................................................................... 113 7.2. Centralization of Coercion ............................................................................................................. 117 7.3. Patterns of Popular Contention ...................................................................................................... 118 7.4. Labor Protests ................................................................................................................................ 123 7.5. Political Breakthrough ................................................................................................................... 133 Chapter Eight: Kazakhstan ....................................................................................................................... 145 8.1. Functional Decentralization ........................................................................................................... 146 8.2. Decentralization of Coercion ......................................................................................................... 152 8.3. Patterns of Popular Contention ...................................................................................................... 156 8.3.1. Formal Opposition ...................................................................................................................... 157 8.3.2. Popular Opposition and Labor Protests ...................................................................................... 166 8.4. Localized Protest and Authoritarian Resilience ............................................................................. 178 Chapter Nine: Conclusion ........................................................................................................................