Why after almost a decade of silence and "successful" crackdowns of contention during the 1980s has Iran witnessed once again waves of increasing popular protest? What are the processes and mechanisms behind the routinization of collective actions in Iran since the early 1990s, which continue despite state repression? Why and under what circumstances does a strong authoritarian state that has previously marginalized its contenders tolerate some forms of contention despite the state's continued repressive capacity? And finally, to what extent are available social movement theories capable of explaining the Iranian case? In "State, Dissidents, and Contention: Iran, 1979-2010" I engage theories of social movements and contentious politics in order to examine the emergence, development, and likely outcomes of popular contention in contemporary Iran. My study is the first project of its kind to focus on elite factionalism and its impact on popular mobilization in contemporary Iran. Although other scholars have extensively written on elite factionalism in postrevolutionary Iran, they have not analyzed the implications of the inter-elite conflict for the emergence and development of social protests against the Islamic Republic. While this study primarily utilizes political process and resource mobilization models, it acknowledges the importance of economic, ideological, and breakdown approaches for the interpretation of the emergence and development of popular mobilization in contemporary Iran. Drawing on data gathered from census figures, public policies, state and oppositional newspapers, and interviews with dissidents and state officials, this study shows that collective actions against the Islamic Republic emerged gradually due to institutional changes, limited electorate competition, social and educational expansion, and, more importantly, the intellectual transformation of a significant segment of the elites and their action-intended discourse. I demonstrate that the political opportunity structure is not a unitary national opportunity but rather varies by social groups, demands, and contexts. I make this argument by exploring the political environment for collective mobilization in contemporary Iran in four key contexts: 1. the period of consolidation, war, and repression (1979-1988, the Khomeini era); 2. the period of postwar reconstruction and economic liberalization (1989-1997, the tenure of President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani); 3. the era of reform and political opening (1997-2005, the tenure of President Seyyed Mohammad Khatami); and 4. the period of mobilization in the context of increasingly violent repression (2005-present, the tenure of President Mahmood Ahmadinejad). By examining social protests within these different contexts, I conclude that regimes that use force to restrict political rights after a long and sustained period of opening risk eliciting resistance from dissidents who have already gained organizational resources to challenge the state's violent closing.

This thesis examines gentrification in the historic centre of the Syrian capital Damascus prior to the civil war beginning in spring 2011 and to what extent the authoritarian regime facilitated and benefited from gentrification and urban heritage as means of regime maintenance. In so doing it critically engages with and brings into dialogue bodies of literature that, on first sight, have not much in common: first, gentrification, the production of urban space for the better-off, a process which can now be observed globally; second, urban heritage (i.e. its use for economic, political or identity-related purposes); and third, authoritarian resilience, with a focus on the Middle East, a region where authoritarian regimes remained resilient to internal and external pressures for economic and political liberalization. The thesis identifies the advance of neoliberalism and alterations in Syria’s elite composition as the contexts in which the literatures as well as the processes under scrutiny overlap. Qualitative interviews with private and official stakeholders in gentrification and heritage preservation in Old Damascus form the empirical foundation of this study, complemented by the analysis of newspaper articles, internet sources and works of fiction. Until 2011, gentrification emerged mainly in the form of commercialized historic property, a trend mainly driven by members of the upper and upper-middle classes, who were both producers and consumers of a gentrified Old Damascus. Beside the sheer interest in capital accumulation, stakeholders “used” the old city as a source of identity and an element of a Damascene heritage discourse. In addition to upper-class Damascenes’ economic and identity-related interests this thesis argues that authoritarian resilience, and thus the interests of the authoritarian state, developed into an additional aspect of gentrification and heritage promotion in Old Damascus, as the regime benefited from and facilitated both processes. Providing affluent parts of the population with a commodified landscape of consumption enabled the regime to domestically gain the support of consumers and those co-opted by privileged access to lucrative business opportunities in the old city (i.e. regime cronies and loyal entrepreneurs). Additionally, the promotion of a gentrified Old Damascus and its heritage as a tourist attraction functioned as an opportunity to upgrade the country’s negative image abroad. In conclusion, approaching authoritarian resilience through the analytical lenses of gentrification and heritage contributes to a broader understanding of urban transformations in authoritarian states. However, in the face of coercion through urban warfare, destruction and ethnic cleansing, it is unclear to what extent gentrification and heritage are still of importance for regime maintenance in Syria’s cities.

This thesis began largely as an exploration into right-wing political ideology and its relationship to The Authoritarian Personality proposed by Adorno, Frenkel-Brunswick, Levinson and Sanford (1950). It had initially been envisaged that contemporary examples would manifest themselves within many neo-Fascist or ‘White Pride’ style organisations and as an adage to their supposed historical underpinnings, would therefore be representative of modern day authoritarianism. As previously discovered by Eysenck and Coulter (1974) in their examination of British Fascists and Communists, the authoritarian syndrome is somewhat more complex to explain by way of reference to a number of radical semi-political organisations. Subsequently, the thesis was to take on a deeper and more philosophical direction as various parts of the literature were analysed and critiqued. And indeed to some extent the original proposal was abandoned in favour of a richer and more conceptual approach to our understanding of authoritarianism. This was discovered to be distinctly missing from the majority of the current literature in the field.

Election boycotts are a common occurrence in unconsolidated democracies, particularly in the developing world, with prominent examples from recent years occurring in Venezuela, Zimbabwe, and Ethiopia. Despite the frequent occurrence of boycotts, there are few studies available in the scholarly literature concerning the effectiveness of electoral boycotts, particularly as a strategy of opposition parties seeking to bring about the end of electoral authoritarian governments. This paper is based in the democratization literature, with a particular focus on the behavior and vulnerabilities of hybrid or electoral authoritarian regimes. Using an original dataset with global coverage including hybrid regimes from 1981 to 2006, this paper uses event-history analysis to determine the efficacy of boycotts in national elections among other risk factors thought to undermine electoral authoritarian regimes as well as the possibilities for subsequent democratization occurring following both contested and boycotted electoral processes.

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The present study examined the relationship between fundamentalism and cognitive complexity. Fundamentalism was viewed from a single dimension as well as multivariately, in order to compare predictive ability. Fundamentalism was analyzed as a single dimension by using the revised Fundamentalism Scale (Martin & Westie, 19595 revised by Edgington, 1987) under the heading "fundamentalism/orthodoxy," due to the fact that the orthodoxy component is that which is measured by the scale. Fundamentalism was also analyzed multivariately, combining fundamentalism/orthodoxy, religiosity, authoritarianism, and dogmatism into a composite variable to give a "richer" definition of "fundamentalism," and to enhance predictive ability in regard to cognitive complexity.This study also sought to confirm findings reported among more diverse populations in the more restrictive population of fundamentalist seminarians. Pearson product-moment correlation coefficients were used.There were 98 fundamentalist seminary students from a midwestern seminary who participated in the study. Each one completed the revised Fundamentalism Scale (Martin & Westie,1959; Edgington, 1987), the Religiosity Scales (Faulkner & DeJong, 1965), the F- (Authoritarianism) Scale (Adorno, FrenkelBrunsivick Levinson, & Sanford, 1950), the D- (Dogmatism) Scale (Rokeach, 1960), and the Paragraph Completion Test (PCT) by Hunt and Dopyera (1966) using the coding system developed by Schroder, Driver and Streufert (1967).The findings of this study indicated that the fundamentalism/orthodoxy construct (revised Fundamentalism Scale) was an effective predictor of cognitive complexity, accounting for 17% of the variation (p < .01). The correlation coefficient between fundamentalism/orthodoxy and cognitive complexity was -.41, revealing that higher levels of fundamentalism/orthodoxy correlated significantly (p < .01) with lower levels of cognitive complexity.Viewed multivariately, "fundamentalism" accounted for 23% of the variation on cognitive complexity, significant at the .01 level. This composite or synthetic variable labeled "fundamentalism" consisted of the fundamentalism/orthodoxy component and the authoritarianism (F-Scale) component. These two variables could be "trusted" to add something unique in predicting level of cognitive complexity. Dogmatism and religiosity could not; therefore, they were not added to the regression equation. / Department of Counseling Psychology and Guidance Services

This thesis began largely as an exploration into right-wing political ideology and its relationship to The Authoritarian Personality proposed by Adorno, Frenkel-Brunswick, Levinson and Sanford (1950). It had initially been envisaged that contemporary examples would manifest themselves within many neo-Fascist or ‘White Pride’ style organisations and as an adage to their supposed historical underpinnings, would therefore be representative of modern day authoritarianism. As previously discovered by Eysenck and Coulter (1974) in their examination of British Fascists and Communists, the authoritarian syndrome is somewhat more complex to explain by way of reference to a number of radical semi-political organisations. Subsequently, the thesis was to take on a deeper and more philosophical direction as various parts of the literature were analysed and critiqued. And indeed to some extent the original proposal was abandoned in favour of a richer and more conceptual approach to our understanding of authoritarianism. This was discovered to be distinctly missing from the majority of the current literature in the field.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2008. / Title from first page of PDF file. Includes bibliographical references (p. 145-161).

Thesis--PlanB (M.S.)--University of Wisconsin--Stout, 1998. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis--Columbia University. / Without thesis statement. Bibliographical references included in "Notes" (p. 257-289).