Immediately after its founding by Hồ Chí Minh in September 1945, the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) faced challenges from rival Vietnamese political organizations and from a France determined to rebuild her empire after the humiliations of WWII. Hồ, with strategic genius, courageous maneuver, and good fortune, was able to delay full-scale war with France for sixteen months in the northern half of the country. This was enough time for his Communist Party, under the cover of its Vietminh front organization, to neutralize domestic rivals and install the rough framework of an independent state. That fledgling state became a weapon of war when the DRV and France finally came to blows in Hanoi during December of 1946, marking the official beginning of the First Indochina War. With few economic resources at their disposal, Hồ and his comrades needed to mobilize an enormous and free contribution in manpower and rice from DRV-controlled regions. Extracting that contribution during the war’s early days was primarily a matter of patriotic exhortation. By the early 1950s, however, the infusion of weapons from the United States, the Soviet Union, and China had turned the Indochina conflict into a “total war.” Hunger, exhaustion, and violence, along with the conflict’s growing political complexity, challenged the DRV leaders’ mobilization efforts, forcing patriotic appeals to be supplemented with coercion and terror. This trend reached its revolutionary climax in late 1952 when Hồ, under strong pressure from Stalin and Mao, agreed to carry out radical land reform in DRV-controlled areas of northern Vietnam. The regime’s 1954 victory over the French at Điện Biên Phủ, the return of peace, and the division of the country into North and South did not slow this process of socialist transformation. Over the next six years (1954–1960), the DRV’s Communist leaders raced through land reform and agricultural collectivization with a relentless sense of urgency. Mass Mobilization in the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, 1945–1960 explores the way the exigencies of war, the dreams of Marxist-Leninist ideology, and the pressures of the Cold War environment combined with pride and patriotism to drive totalitarian state formation in northern Vietnam.

This thesis analyzes the question whether violent or nonviolent protest is more threating for the survival of authoritarian regimes. Based on previous literature, I argue that protest in general and violent protest in countries with low state capacity should make regime collapse more likely. Furthermore, I take the repressive nature of autocratic regimes into account and argue that violent repression against peaceful protesters makes regime collapse more likely, while regimes employing violence against violent protest become more stable. I employ Cox Proportional Hazard Models and Conditional Gap Time Models to analyze the effect of protest and repression on the survival of authoritarian regimes and find support for my theory that protest makes regimes more prone to collapse in general, and that countries with low state capacity are more vulnerable to violent protest. I cannot find support for the hypothesis that violent repression against peaceful protest destabilizes a country, but I find that regimes using coercive measures against violent protest become more stable. However, this is only true when violent protest causes harm and death to others people.

Through a paired comparison of two moments of mass mobilization, in Ukraine and Argentina, focusing on the role of different actors involved, this text maps out a multi-layered sequence of events leading up to mass mobilization. Moments of mass mobilization astound us. As a sea of protesters fills the streets, observers scramble to understand this extraordinary political act by 'ordinary' citizens. This study presents a paired comparison of two 'moments' of mass mobilization, in Ukraine and Argentina. The two cases are compared and analyzed on a cross-temporal and an inter-regional basis, thereby offering two critical cases in response to assumptions that the processes and patterns of mobilization, and democratization politics more broadly, are region specific. This study challenges political science's focus on elites and structural factors in the study of political participation during democratization.

This book describes the turbulent political history of Afghanistan from the communist upheaval of the 1970s through to the aftermath of the events of 11 September 2001. It reviews the importance of the region to external powers and explains why warfare and instability have been endemic. The author analyses in detail the birth of the Taliban and the bloody rise to power of fanatic Islamists, including Osama bin Laden, in the power vacuum following the withdrawal of US aid. Looking forward, Nojumi explores the ongoing quest for a third political movement in Afghanistan - an alternative to radical communists or fanatical Islamists and suggests the support that will be neccessary from the international community in order for such a movement to survive.

How do weak activists organize under repression? This book theorizes a dynamic of contention called mobilizing without the masses.